Rick Hansen Foundation uses Equidox for Accessible Documents

The Rick Hansen Foundation (RHF) was established in 1988, following the completion of Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion World Tour. For over 30 years, RHF has worked to raise awareness, change attitudes, and remove barriers for people with disabilities.  They are committed to helping remove barriers in both physical and digital spaces.

To that end, they use Equidox’s PDF Remediation software in order to facilitate making their PDFs accessible to users of assistive technology.  RHF strives to build in accessibility from the inception of their digital documents. Amy Lin, their graphic designer, endeavors to build documents that include correct color contrast and meet font standards, and which are universally accessible graphically.

The RHF team has consulted with the Equidox accessibility team to create documents that are as accessible as possible from the start. Many platforms provide accessibility features such as headings and alt text for images, which can greatly reduce the amount of remediation necessary when the source documents are saved as PDFs. In addition, understanding how accessibility and assistive technology work together goes a long way to informing how source documents are created to facilitate greater usability in the end document.

From there, RHF uses the Equidox software to complete the tagging of PDF documents such as annual reports and press releases. Equidox is a semi-automated remediation tool, and many tasks are greatly simplified by this intuitive software.  Much of the text, images, and existing tags are automatically detected by the software. There are shortcuts for many time-consuming repetitive tasks – such as a zone detector that automatically tags content on the page, a dedicated tab that allows alt text for all images within the document to be added, and a table editor powered by machine learning and computer vision.

“The software allows me to quickly highlight and tag elements. Much of the work is automated, and it’s very straightforward to learn and use.  I like that their support team is there if I need them and that I didn’t need experience remediating PDFs at all to use the software,” says Ms. Lin.

For more complex documents, RHF chose Equidox PDF conversion services instead of tackling these projects internally. Equidox’s professional remediation team remediated these documents quickly and accurately. Equidox is committed to exceptional usability for all their documents. Their professional remediation undergoes a rigorous validation process that includes actual humans using assistive technology to ensure accuracy in addition to automated testing.

“It’s important to us to keep accessibility as the first feature of the materials we create.  We are committed to inclusion and want our content to cater to all abilities,” says Hana Cairns, Marketing and Communications Manager.  “Equidox is one of the tools that help us include everyone.”