Madrid, April 28, 2023 – When we remove barriers we make things more accessible and that is precisely what we are going to talk about in this article: accessibility, which is defined as the property of objects, places and activities that allows any person to participate, access or use them.
However, when we talk about accessibility, we tend to think only of breaking down physical barriers, and that is where we are wrong. Accessibility should not only be physical, especially in an increasingly digital world. Virtual barriers must also be lifted, especially those related to reading and understanding documents.
A company should be able to communicate with its customers regardless of their ability to read and understand the information. Therefore, an accessible electronic document will be one that integrates the necessary tools to conveyits content to as many people as possible.
Accessibility challenges in the public and private sector
Although the public sector has already implemented guidelines to ensure full accessibility to the documents it makes available to citizens, administrations are still a long way from achieving this goal.
In the private sector, the situation is much the same: When communicating with their customers, companies continue to generate millions of non-accessible PDF documents every day. And these are precisely the ones that pose a barrier for people with disabilities. So, the question that arises is: How can we change the situation not only for the documents that will be generated in the future, but also for those that are already archived?
Companies often store thousands of documents on their physical servers and in the cloud. Think of banks, insurance companies, consulting firms and public administrations. They produce and manage countless documents every day and use the PDF format to distribute contracts, forms, business information, electronic invoices, and many others. For security reasons, the Word format is out of the question, as it can be edited and therefore manipulated.
This endless amountof documents is not in barrier-free formats, so people with visual or motor disabilities have many problems accessing their content. These people have no choice but to resort to assistive tools such as screen readers. However, these readers have their limitations, as they require “labels”, i.e.,elements such as headings, paragraphs, lists, and tables, for user guidance.
A “universal” solution to these challenges
This is where the PDF/UA standard, which stands for “universal accessibility,” comes into play. PDF documents that comply with this standard incorporate tagsthat guide users with disabilities.
If a company aspires to be 100% inclusive, it must export all current and future documents to PDF/UA format. However, it sounds easier than it is. Manually providing and configuring tags for all files is not a viable or realistic option considering the many hours of tedious and specialized work that this would entail. Fortunately, document software technology and solutions are now available to overcome this challenge.
The potential of PDF converters
The best document software companies have developed different functionalities to provide communication adapted to each person and thus eliminate all barriers. We should not ignore all those people who cannot enjoy the facilities provided by computers when communicating with other individuals or entities.
As a result, many countries are establishing regulations in the business world to drive conversion solutions through the mandatory creation of accessible PDFs. Laws such as Section 508 in the U.S., UK’s Accessibility Regulations 2018 for Public Bodies, or UNE-EN 301-549:2018-08 in Europe stipulate that every government agency or public service must have accessible documents and web portals.
Other laws, such as the UN Convention onthe Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), are binding on everyone, so it is only a matter of time before all companies need accessible PDFs.
These powerful document software converters generate tags automatically and integrate advances in artificial intelligence (AI). PDF generators and editors allow, among many other functionalities, creating documents under the PDF/UA specification. In addition, they automatically insert the necessary tags during the conversion process, as long as the source document is properly formatted.
These conversion programs can be integrated as plug-ins into Microsoft Word or other standard applications. Users who use such tools on a daily basiscan therefore ensure the accessibility of the latest and newest documents.
The problem lies in archived documents that do not yet comply with the PDF/UA standard and are not in a format suitable for conversion. In these cases, the application of artificial intelligence could be considered, as machine learning algorithms are very efficient at recognizing patterns, for example, text elements in a document.
Artificial intelligence recognizes building blocks such as headers, titles, subheadings, paragraphs, footers, lists or tables, and is particularly effective in documents with a similar visual structure.
Once the logical structure has been detected, artificial intelligence can automatically label the documents and reformat thousands of documents in a few seconds. In this way, trees are created that represent the structure of the documents and their different visual objects.
Therefore, the same principle can be applied to images and graphics.Algorithms have already been developed that generate automatic image descriptions. This means that visually impaired people will soon be able to get an explanation of the content of images in documents through speech output.
In addition, these document software converters include the option to define different layers to create documents from forms in multiple languages, stored in a central repository that includes document versioning, making documentseasy to read in their respective language from any PDF reader.
The future of AI in document management
Artificial intelligence has only just burst into our lives and jobs. No one really knows its enormous potential, regardless of the area in which we work. Therefore, when it comes to improving accessibility in document management, we must constantly incorporate the results of research into the development of digitization products in order tooffer the most innovative and efficient technology.
In this sense, an important aspect for accessibility is natural language processing (NLP). Document software companies should devote time and resources to researching the automatic conversion of documents into barrier-free formats.
Currently, their focus should be on issues such as determining language proficiency and level (clear and simple language), linguistic analyses, recognition of reading direction and order, and automatic alternative formulations.
About DocPath
DocPath is a leading enterprise document software company that offers its international customers the technology that allows them to complement their ERP and implement advanced Document Output Management, Customer Communications Management and document software pooling processes.
Founded in 1993, DocPath is based in Europe, USA and Latin America and is present with its Solutions in companies around the world. Among its customers there are prestigious banks and top-tier corporations, facilitating the difficult and complex task of designing, generating and distributing their business-critical documents. DocPath keeps a strong commitment to R+D+i, an area to which it allocates a large part of its revenues, and in which lies one of the keys to its success.
For more information, visit: www.docpath.com.
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