In colleges and universities, disability services offices (DSOs) are often the frontline for ensuring students with disabilities have equal access to educational materials. While the spotlight tends to focus on accommodations like extended test time or captioned videos, one of the most time-consuming—and often invisible—tasks is remediating inaccessible PDFs.
Every semester, DSO staff receive requests from students who encounter course materials, syllabi, lecture notes, and administrative forms in formats they cannot access. Most commonly, this means PDFs that are either scanned documents where the text is an image, or poorly structured documents with no tags, no headings, and no text alternatives for images or charts.
The Real Cost of Remediation
A PDF needs to be remediated manually—sometimes in a matter of hours—so a blind or low-vision student can keep up with class. Each student may have many PDFs for each, and are likely taking multiple courses. Additionally, students will need to access equally important PDFs outside of class, such as event agendas, financial aid or scholarship applications, and other important community information. This can result in a substantial workload.
This reactive model pulls DSO staff away from other critical student support functions. It’s not just inefficient—it’s unsustainable.
A Proactive Approach Is Essential
Colleges are increasingly recognizing that accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought. Making accessibility a proactive, campus-wide responsibility—rather than one concentrated in a single office—is key to ensuring equity and easing burnout on DSO teams.
One of the most effective ways to do that is by empowering content creators—faculty, administrative staff, and web teams—with tools that make accessibility easy and achievable at scale.
Enter Equidox: Accessibility Made Simple
Equidox PDF Accessibility Software is built to simplify the process of making PDFs accessible. It doesn’t require deep technical knowledge or extensive training, making it ideal for higher education environments where users vary widely in their digital skills.
With its intuitive interface and smart detection features, Equidox automatically identifies headings, tables, and lists. Users can quickly tag and check reading order using automated sliders and keyboard shortcuts—no need to learn complex tagging syntax or navigate clunky remediator platforms.
When departments across campus are equipped to create and fix accessible PDFs themselves, fewer emergency requests land on the DSO’s desk. That means more time for proactive student engagement, planning, and holistic support.
Accessible Documents = Equitable Education
Accessibility isn’t just about ticking the boxes of compliance, it’s about building a culture where everyone has the tools they need to succeed. Accessibility becomes a part of campus culture when students can read their class syllabus, navigate a housing form, or read research documents independently from day one, without having to request remediation.
DSOs should absolutely remain central to accessibility strategy, but they shouldn’t be the sole line of defense. Tools like Equidox make it possible for accessibility to scale, so that digital equity isn’t a burden—it’s a shared commitment.
Nina Overdorff
Nina comes to Equidox with years of sales and marketing experience from a variety of industries and holds a BS in Language Arts Education. Nina has a passion for words, storytelling, and information, which she believes everyone should have access to regardless of ability. After spending time as a teacher with a blind student, she became much more aware of the limitations and abilities of web accessibility, and how essential it is to those experiencing disabilities. “Being able to access information equally ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity for education, employment, and success in life.”
Let’s talk!
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