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>> Equidox PDF Accessibility Solutions — Reach Everyone.
Accessibility can be seen every day
in things such as handicapped parking spaces,
closed captioning on your television,
or textured pavements.
One of the greatest barriers for people who are blind
or have low vision is access to written information.
If you cannot see or cannot see well,
reading can be a difficult or insurmountable task.
This can make using computers, smartphones, and the internet —
something most of us do every day —
very difficult, if not impossible.
People who have low vision or are blind
may have a wide variety of visual perception.
They may have some vision
but still be unable to read print or text on a screen
due to colorblindness,
blurry vision, tunnel vision,
or even vision with an irregularly obscured field.
They may be able to detect light or shadow,
or they may see nothing at all.
And many people who are blind or have low vision are able to
get around and function within their environment
but still are unable to see clearly enough to read.
Screen readers are the most common tools
for accessing digital information
that are used by people who are blind or have low vision.
People who have dyslexia, learning disabilities,
temporary disabilities such as concussion,
other print disabilities such as stroke or brain injuries,
and people who prefer learning through auditory formats
also use screen readers.
They provide the information by reading aloud
digitally coded content
contained within the digital documents and websites.
Many blind people also use connected braille displays
which convert the data provided by the screen reader
into braille.
Braille is the only way for a person
who is deaf-blind to access digital information.
Fortunately, screen readers
are built into much of our technology now,
from your television hardware to game consoles to smartphones,
and you will find screen-reading technology
available on computers, laptops and tablets.
However, screen readers do not see what is on the screen;
they read aloud information provided digitally
by means of digital encoding.
For PDF documents, this encoding is called “Tags."
Because the screen readers rely on these digital tags
and not the visual content to read the information aloud,
sometimes what a sighted person sees
is not what a blind or partially sighted person gets.
The tags must be applied correctly in order
for the content to be accurately relayed by the screen reader.
Tags serve many functions.
They communicate structure and relationships
to assistive technology.
Some are for headings so a person using a screen reader
can skim through the content,
much as a sighted person would do with newspaper headlines.
Without headings, a person using a screen reader
would have to read every single word
to find a specific piece of information.
Some tags describe images
since people using assistive technology
often cannot see what they depict.
Other tags are for reading order
so that the content is not read out of order.
Just adding an extra line or a paragraph to your document
can throw off the digital reading order,
even if it is visually in the correct place.
Understanding how content needs to be tagged
is part of learning to produce accessible documents,
applications, and websites.
Let's examine this document using a screen reader.
We have chosen to use NVDA
as it is a free download available to anyone.
Here is what happens when a screen reader attempts to read
a PDF document that is entirely untagged.
Screen Reader: PDF sample as image dot PDF.
Alert— empty document.
This document appears to be empty.
It may be a scanned image that needs OCR,
or it may be a malformed document.
>> If you are blind or have low vision,
you will get no usable information of any kind
about this document.
Even when a document is tagged,
it's important that it be tagged correctly.
Let's have another look at the same document, this time tagged,
but only partially.
This document is not properly tagged,
and you will see some of the common issues faced by people
using assistive technology to access digital information.
We will be using the Tab key to move around the document,
and we will move ahead before all content
is read in some cases.
You will also see the text being read highlighted on the page,
and we will show the NVDA viewer so that you can see
what the screen reader is perceiving digitally
as it reads aloud.
Note also that there are many voices available
to be used with screen readers, and they can read at great speed
if the person using the technology is able to keep up,
much like a sighted person would speed read.
For this demonstration we have chosen a human-sounding voice
and set it to a normal, conversational speed.
Screen Reader: Graphic.
>> Notice that the screen reader has not identified this image,
other than to say “graphic.”
A person using the screen reader
will have no idea what this graphic is.
Screen Reader: Heading level 1— Save up to 90 percent
on time and resources.
>> This content has been read out of order.
An entire section of text has been skipped.
Screen Reader: Equidox has helped to improve
our [indistinct] remediate inaccessible PDFs
quickly and easily.
>> This text has not been identified as a heading
and, again, content read out of order.
Screen Reader: Graphic rectangle.
Graphic rectangle. Equidox Services.
Graphic box. Graphic box.
>> These descriptions of background rectangles
are unnecessary and confusing. They should not be included.
Screen Reader: Heading level 2— Conversion Services.
Heading level 2— VPATs evaluation and completion.
Heading level 2— Accessibility Services.
Equidox team remediates your PDFs.
Testing, training, consulting.
>> And again, content read out of order.
Screen Reader: Graphic logo. Graphic logo.
Visit www.Equidox. co
or email EquidoxSales@Onixnet.com.
>> Within this short document
we have found the following errors—
Images with no alt text description,
text with incorrect reading order,
unidentified headings,
unnecessary background objects announced that are confusing.
Visually, this document is perfectly comprehensible.
But because it lacks correct digital tagging,
a person using assistive technology,
such as a braille display or screen reader,
is not going to get an equivalent experience,
and more importantly,
isn't going to get all the information.
Screen readers are a valuable tool
for people who are blind or who have low vision,
but they are only as good as the digital encoding
in the documents and webpages that they are accessing.
For more information about accessible documents
and websites or accessibility training
and consulting, visit us at www.equidox.co.