PDFs are business and industry-standard formats for sending documents, spreadsheets, and more. They can be exceptionally useful and easy ways of ensuring that your document can be shared and read. However, there’s something important to keep in mind: You should always strive to ensure that your document can be accessed by people who do not have the same audio or visual skills that most of us are lucky enough to have. Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act – or ADA – is absolutely critical for you and your business. It’s also the right thing to do.
When Is ADA Compliance Required?
Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act can be a challenging area. On one hand, there are legal requirements that publicly-available documents be ADA compliant, and an entire history of case law that clarifies when ADA applies to digital documents. For example, when it comes to colleges and public schools, most PDFs and other schoolwork must be ADA-accessible, thus ensuring that all people can participate in the educational activities. Thankfully, this may be as simple as ensuring that documents can be easily converted into something that can be easily used by visually-impaired individuals. Your best bet is to consult with an attorney in order to confirm your compliance.
That being said, ADA compliance may not be legally required when it comes to sending a PDF to one individual. However, if you know that someone has vision problems, there is no question that you should strive to ensure that your documents can be read.
What Are My Options?
Thankfully, as technology has evolved, so have the ways of making sure that your website and PDF files are ADA compliant. One such example is AudioEye. This program can be great for PDF remediation. Using the latest technology, AudioEye will convert a document into some sort of readable format. The team will then give a document back to you that is fully accessible, regardless of the end-users physical limitations. The company brags that it has customized solutions that work for any team, regardless of their level of technical expertise or size.
There are a slew of other options available that can assist with these issues, including within Adobe Acrobat itself. This can be useful at a basic level, but it is important to keep in mind that more complex documents may require more complex solutions. Furthermore, in some cases, an individual may not require a voice to read the text of a PDF to them, and the ability to zoom in on a document may be enough to compensate for eyesight-related problems.
Technology’s evolution has made the world a better place in many ways, and one such example is that it has made it easier for our friends that have visual or audio problems to still take part in all the activities that so many of us take for granted. PDF accessibility is another example of this, and you should strive to ensure that your documents are as accessible as possible.