All right, so it is just about two o'clock. So I think we should get started.
Welcome everyone to another edition of Equidox Webinar Wednesdays,
Today we're gonna be talking about accessibility checkers. Some of the pros, cons, and beyond.
As always my name is Dan Tuleta I'm a sales engineer here with the Equidox team. If you
have any questions as a follow-up to this short presentation or webinar today, please feel free
to reach out to us at EquidoxSales@Onixnet.com, or visit our website Equidox.co. And we're also
very active on LinkedIn and social media, so please follow us if you are on those various
platforms. So let's get started. Just a quick mention of our parent company Onix Networking.
So Onix is one of Google's first and most trusted partners. We also work closely with Amazon web
services. We're primarily a cloud consultancy. We offer a lot of different services and solutions
around cloud computing. And Equidox is a division of Onix, really a product, as we're most known
for our PDF remediation solution. So within Equidox, we do offer various services around
PDF accessibility, and as I said most commonly known for our software called Equidox. And our
mission is to ensure that digital information reaches everyone via accessibility solutions.
Just a quick slide here about some of our clients. So we do work with government,
EDU, and enterprise corporations of all different shapes and sizes. So we offer a
lot of different solutions to a lot of different types of industries and sizes of organizations.
Just a quick mention here of the accessibility standards and legislation. Now,
these are some of the most common various sets of standards and legislation that many people on this
webinar are probably familiar with, seeing at least some if not all of these.
So we just want to make sure that everyone is aware of some of the common
acronyms and terms that could be used to refer to when talking about digital accessibility.
Now another mention here of accessibility versus usability. So there are big gaps between what
accessibility versus usability actually is. Now an example that I like to use for this is,
imagine that you're working on a document that is a form. And the form is asking you to fill out
the date. Now if you're a blind individual using a screen reader if that form is asking you to
fill in the date, which dates are they asking for? Is it your birth date?
Is it the date that you're signing it? Is it the date that the receiver of that form is signing it?
Is it the date that the office is actually filing that form? There are massive gaps between what can
actually be defined as accessible versus usable. While technically the form is accessible if it's
telling you to fill in the date, there needs to be additional context given to that end-user so that
they're able to accurately fill out the date. That's just one of many examples of how these
types of challenges can arise for different people with various levels of ability and disability.
Just talking a bit more about accessibility but versus usability. So
another example, other examples of where these things can arise in PDF documents or websites.
For example, alt text that is present, but doesn't actually describe the image properly.
Now for these accessibility checkers which we're going to be talking a little bit about today,
they're designed to check for the presence of alt text. But they're not necessarily designed
to check for accuracy of alt text. So you could apply alt text to an image that says “image one”
or “picture one.” Now if that's an important and technical image that has a lot of information, how
is a blind user supposed to draw any information from an alt text that says “image one?”
So there are many different examples of these types of challenges that can arise. Another common
one that I like to use is, imagine a website that has restaurant menus on it. And oftentimes with
restaurant menus, they'll use different symbols, such as gluten-free or vegan types of options
to indicate exactly what types of options they have on that menu for those different patrons to
the website. So if you have, for example, a Thai restaurant that's offering very spicy food, they
might use symbols of peppers to indicate how spicy the food is. Now those peppers are typically going
to be little tiny images within the context of that PDF document. And if they are all described
as “pepper” “pepper” “pepper” “pepper,” how is an end-user supposed to know what that is referring
to? That could be a mistake in the document. What are these peppers all about? Is this document
just a plate of peppers? Or is this meal just a plate of peppers? So in those types of instances,
technically those peppers could be technically accessible, but not usable for an end-user
who's not aware that the pepper symbol is an indication of how spicy or how hot that food is.
Other examples might be undefined acronyms. So for example internally within our team when
we're talking on instant messenger and sending little emails back and forth to each other,
sometimes we will use the acronym “EQ” to refer to Equidox. Now if you're using a screen-reader
and there's references in a document to Equidox as “EQ,” a screen reader does not know that EQ
means Equidox. And it's going to pronounce “ECK” or “EEEK.” So that is very useless to an end-user
who's not familiar enough with our internal communication and how we talk amongst ourselves as
a team to actually be able to draw any information from the word “ECK” or “EEK.” So it's important to
make sure that you are properly spelling out and making reference to these acronyms and
using plain English to describe these types of shortcuts that we use when we're communicating.
I've already mentioned form fields with proper or with poorly defined labels. So for example,
you know, if you're asking for (going back to the date example) there's other problems that
can arise when asking for a date. Which format do you want the date to be entered in? You have to
indicate in explicit detail as to, do you want the days first then the month then the year? Do you
want four digits for the year or do you want two digits for the year? So depending on, you know,
which country you're in, what the document is for, there can be different ways of actually entering
dates. But if that information is not available to end-users who are interacting with the document
using a screen reader, that can cause a lot of problems and a lot of challenges where they
are going to be entering dates in the improper format. Which can of course lead to confusion.
So that's another thing to consider when you are remediating documents such as forms. Making sure
that all of those fields are properly labeled. Another challenge is the language attributes. Now
words can be pronounced differently depending on the language attribute that is applied so consider
a name like “George.” With the incorrect language attribute set, that could be pronounced as
or something completely different. That doesn't make any sense to an end-user. Can lead to a lot
of confusion. So there's many things that you can consider when you're setting up your document in
terms of making it not just the bare minimum for accessibility, but actually going beyond
and setting it up so that it's actually fully usable for those end users.
Now here is a list of some of the most common PDF accessibility checkers. So these are really
designed to analyze documents based on very specific and rigid sets of criteria
to determine the document's accessibility. And to find and locate the errors within those documents.
However, there's a lot of things that these are not able to actually check for. So just getting
a passing grade from an accessibility checker such as Adobe's accessibility checker, or the
PAC-3 checker does not actually indicate that the document is fully accessible or fully usable.
I'm so often asked when I'm talking to different clients “How do we know when the document is
accessible?” And these accessibility checkers are very popular and they should be used in
your remediation workflow to check the validity of the structures that you're creating. However
you have to take it a step further to really ensure total and full usability. So just a quick
mention of these accessibility checkers and some of the things that they can and cannot check for.
So there's many things that they're incapable of looking for. So for example, as I said before
you can have an alt text that says “image one,” but the accuracy of that alt text is not able to
be checked for by automated accessibility checkers. That is up to the remediator to
make sure that the alt text is accurate. The same goes for heading structure, the URLs,
table summaries, tooltips on form documents, as well as reading order. Automated accessibility
checkers are not able to determine the nuances of reading order because all PDFs can be different
and unique and have completely different ways that they are designed to be read. So these are
things where accessibility checkers are looking for certain things that meet the criteria that
they're designed to check for, but they're not at they're not able to find everything that can cause
very very serious usability errors later down the line for those end users.
Now here's a list of common screen readers. So screen reading tools are what the
majority of blind users are using to interact with digital content. So these are the most
common and most broadly used screen readers. I do want to mention that NVDA is free and
open source. As part of our services offering where we do PDF remediation for our clients,
the final step in the validation workflow is to actually use NVDA to interact with the document
and sort of replicate how a blind user would be working with that document. Just to make sure
that the document is in fact fully usable. So if you're ever interested in testing out some
screen readers and seeing how they work, and how they interact with your digital content,
definitely check out NVDA. It is free to download and free to use.
Now, Equidox, as part of our software package, the Equidox Preview panel.
This is a very important part of our software because what the Equidox Preview panel does is,
it gives you an HTML rendering of the page that you're currently working on. And these
HTML pages are updated in real-time as you are working through and remediating the document.
And the HTML preview is of course usable with accessibility checkers, and it's also
usable for screen reading technology as well. So it's a great way of checking your work at the
point of remediation, so that the remediator, even if they are not an accessibility expert,
they're able to see the structure that they're building, and they're able to check the accuracy
of the content that they're working on. Because they get feedback in HTML before they export the
document. And we're going to work on an example and go through some of the steps of how you can
use the HTML preview to assist you as you are working through documents. Now the final step
when you're done working on documents in Equidox is of course outputting or exporting the document.
So when you're exporting documents from Equidox, there are a series of output checks
that are being applied to that document. And the warning messages will arise if you have mistakes,
structural mistakes, in your document, that can be fixed and you can go back into Equidox... into the
page that those issues were located on. You can go back and fix those and re-export the document.
Now, this is not an exhaustive list of all of the things that we're checking for,
but some of the things that you can find are: missing all text, multiple heading levels,
multiple heading level ones, or illogical heading structure. If you have URLs missing
from your links, if you have form fields missing tooltips, if table summaries are not there,
as well as untagged pages and a number of other checks that are being applied. So you have this
as sort of your backup as you're remediating a document. When you export that document, you
will get feedback from Equidox that it's applying some of these checks to make sure that you are not
making glaring mistakes in how you've structured your document. However, you're still free to use
other third-party validation tools, as well as screen readers to finish off the validation
process. I also want to mention that we do have more information in an accessibility blog,
and so when we send out this slide deck to everyone that's on the call today,
you'll be able to click on this link here and open up the blog post and have a look
through. There's a lot of other resources on our website that you are free to browse. So there is
a link to a blog post about avoiding accessibility errors. So check that out when you get a moment.
So just to reiterate what are some of the things that require manual checks.
So the accuracy of alt text, the accuracy of the heading structure, the URLs,
the table summary, the tooltips, and reading order. Now, these are things that you can check
in Equidox while you're using the HTML preview. So that's one of the great benefits of Equidox, is
you're taking things beyond just bare minimum accessibility quote-unquote “accessibility,”
and you're actually validating for accuracy and checking your work as you move through to make
sure that the document is in fact fully usable. Which is what's most important. So I'm gonna at
this moment, I'm gonna actually back out of the slide deck, and we're gonna go into Equidox.
And we will take a look at an example. So what I've done is I've imported a
document. Just a simple one-page document. And I have intentionally sort of made a mess of my
remediation effort here. If I go into the document. I have structured things poorly
and that's the intent of this, is to show you what some of these output warnings will look like,
and how they can be fixed in Equidox. So keep in mind that I've already, I've already worked on
this document for a few minutes, and I've actually improperly set things up. So when I close out of
the document and if I go to the Output tab, when I take this document out of Equidox,
and I hit “Generate PDF,” what I will see is a series of warnings that are popping up.
And these warnings are just letting me know that hey you've got some problems with your document.
So make sure you go back and fix these before you post or distribute this document. Now some
of these warnings are related to the images. So, missing alt text, I have a missing table summary,
I have an improper merge of two zones, I have OCR that I have not actually run an OCR process on,
and so there's just a number of checks that are being applied which I can quickly go back and
clean up. So keep in mind that those warnings are present on my first attempt to export this
document. But before I post this to the website, I want to go back and make sure that I address
all of those error messages that I found. Now a big part of Equidox is of course that HTML
preview which I mentioned before during the slide deck. If I open up the Preview panel,
which is this button here. If I press the Preview, what this will do is open a separate tab.
And it will give me that HTML rendering of the structure that I'm currently building in Equidox.
Now I can see some glaring issues here with my HTML preview right away. First of all,
my reading order is incorrect, my table is at the very bottom of the reading order, when in fact it
should be followed directly by this “for more information” with the links. I know that my links
are incorrect, they're not going to the correct destination. I got that warning message letting
me know I'm also missing list structure for this very complicated-looking nested list. My headings
are all messed up, and I'm missing alt text for my images. So there's a number of things here
that I need to fix. But I'm going to be able to check all of this again in my HTML preview
as I work through and make these corrections. Now starting at the very top of the document,
this PDF sample document text that I'm looking at here, is actually an image. And I decided that I'm
going to OCR this image so that I can actually extract the actual text from it so I've drawn an
OCR zone around that piece of content. But I have not actually converted it into text. So when I hit
“Convert to Text” the OCR process will run and I can actually convert that into something that is
searchable, selectable, and usable. So that will correct the first error, which was that OCR issue.
Now the next error that I'm seeing is my headings. So we need proper and logical heading structure
in our PDF documents. So just to start here, the first heading on the page is a heading level two
which is incorrect. In fact, it says heading level one right in the text itself. We wanna make sure
that we're setting this to the appropriate heading level, and also it's a requirement
in terms of accessibility to make sure that all headings or all documents have at least a heading
level one. That's a requirement. So what we'll do here is change this from a heading level two
to a heading level one, by simply tapping “1” on my keyboard and using my keyboard shortcuts.
The next issue here is I have this text zone which I've improperly merged. I've hit this merge
checkbox inadvertently, so that is attempting to merge this text zone with another zone that
doesn't actually exist. So if I take that merge checkbox off, that will clean up another one of
those errors where I had an improper merge that was going to attempt to merge this text with
another piece of text that doesn't actually exist. So taking that merge checkbox off, we'll clean up
that next error. Moving down the list here, I have another heading level two set, which is fine, so
this is in fact a heading level two, but if you notice my next heading is a heading level four.
So I've jumped from heading level two to heading level four, which is illogical. So I need to reset
this heading to a heading level three by tapping “3” on my keyboard. And I'll do the same thing
down here where I have another heading level four. So I will tap “3” on my keyboard. So then I now
have a heading level one, a heading level two, and then two heading level threes on this page.
The next thing I want to address are these images. Now I have two images on this page,
and neither of them has been given any alt description as of yet. So I'm going to mark this
image here as decorative. And I'm going to “artifact” i. This is just a
sort of cartoon silhouette of a skyline. And this is just there for aesthetic, you know,
design purposes. It's really not offering any information or value to the content
on the page. So what I'm going to do is, just actually hit backspace on my keyboard
and that will artifact the image and remove my requirement of actually applying alt text to it.
The next image down here is our little mascot... we like to call him Equidog. But I will actually
type in a description for this image. And my description will be “black and white dog holding
a briefcase with an Equidox logo.” So I'm taking the time to actually describe that
image accurately, rather than just putting in “image one” or “dot dot” or “one, two, three.”
Again, these accessibility checkers, they are only able to check for the presence of alt text.
They have no idea if it is accurate or not. So that is up to the remediator as you're walking
through documents, to make sure that you are seeing images, understanding the context for
which they fit in the page, and applying accurate and useful alt text to them. Alternatively, if the
image is decorative, as I've determined that this image was, you can artifact it and then you do not
have to apply alt text to it. Another issue that I have on this page is, I have this nested list here
which I have failed to actually remediate. If we go back to the HTML preview, this is how that list
is currently rendering in HTML. Which is just a very strange-looking run-on paragraph. It's not
going to be navigable for end-users, it's going to be very very cumbersome as they try to understand
the relationship between all of these different list items and nested list items. So this does not
belong in a text zone. So what I'll do is I will hit “L” on my keyboard to change the zone type to
a list. And then I have a List Detector slider that will appear. And if I just move this over,
what Equidox will do is it will use its artificial intelligence to analyze this list, and it will
find all of the nested lists and the list items within it. So now I've actually got proper list
structure defined, whereas before I had just a very convoluted-looking paragraph of text.
Down below here, I have a table, of course, but my table is missing a table summary.
So I've already remediated this table. I can go back in and do it over. We can always use our
Detection sliders to move our sliders around to redefine our rows and columns. And then
if we have things, things such as spanning, for example, the years 2017 and 18 need to span across
the four columns that belong underneath them. So if I hold SHIFT and select in these various cells,
and press “S” on my keyboard, and do the same thing, here pressing “S,” that will span across.
But I need my summary to be turned on. So for example, this checkbox here,
Equidox will automatically write the table summary for you based on how you have laid out all of the
gridlines within your table. And in this case, I have two sets of column headers, so if I change
my column header from “1” to “2,” my table summary will automatically update with that information.
So my table summary can be programmatically written for me by Equidox. So there's really
no excuse to leave the table summary blank. So by going back in and turning my auto summarize
feature on, I've taken care of that requirement to provide a table summary. So now I just have to
close out of the table after saving it. And that will return me to the Page Editor. Now down below,
the one remaining issue on this page is this link here, which I have improperly set a URL for
intentionally. Here I've set this to link to page 33 in this document. Well,
there is no page 33 in this document. This is a single-page document, so this is an error to
have someone going to a destination that does not actually exist. So what I can do to fix this, is I
can actually just update the anchor for this link by typing in https:// and then www.Equidox.co.
And then that will actually lead me to the appropriate link. The appropriate destination
through that link. So now that I've made all of those types of corrections, let's
take another look at the HTML preview. And when I go back to the HTML preview, I will see that
I've got some different things happening here. I still have one issue which is the reading order.
But I can see that I have my heading levels defined. My headings are appearing in bolder
and larger font. Here is that nested list which I previously did not have any list structure for,
but now I can see that I actually have a real nested list that will actually be usable
by end-users who are interacting with a screen reader. I have my links down here. If I click on
that link, it will actually take me to our website Equidox.co. So that will actually... Now I can
confirm the accuracy of that link by actually clicking on it and making sure that it does
in fact arrive at the appropriate destination. And down below here I have my table, which I know
has a table summary because I've actually turned that auto-summarize feature on. Now the last thing
to do is clean up my reading order. And I can do that by just simply pressing the “Reorder” button.
And now we'll reorder this page in a top to bottom left to right reading order. And maybe you want to
make one adjustment to the image. Perhaps you want Equidog to be read at the very end of the page.
Well, let's just change its number. We'll put a 1 in front of 13 and make it 113, and then when I
go back to the Preview, it'll be read at the very bottom where we think it belongs. But now my table
is following directly behind the heading that is indicating that there is a table. My list is
directly following my heading that says that there's a list, so I'm happy with my reading
order. Here is that OCR result that I've run earlier. I'm using this HTML preview to confirm
the accuracy and the structure that I've built in this document. So you can see the dramatic
change in how this currently looks versus when we began. Where we had issues with everything
under the sun. I've remediated this page about as poorly as you can possibly remediate it,
but very quickly I'm able to go back in and clean things up. Now that I've cleaned everything up on
this page and I'm happy with it, what I'll do is I will save this layout, and then I will X out of
this document. And I can return to the Output tab. So once I return to the Output tab again,
I just select “PDF,” and I can generate this new PDF document. And this time it will come out
without any of the error messages. So we remember before the previous version had error messages
that were populating down below. This version does not have any errors, because I've gone back in and
corrected them all. And now when I open up the PDF document from the link provided, I can see
nothing visual changes about the document in any way, but this will all be accurate, and usable,
and accessible based on that remediation that I've applied. And again, using that HTML preview to
check the accuracy and the validity of that page that you're working on. So this is going a step
beyond just the automated accessibility checkers. You're checking it at the page level as you work
through the document. And you're knowing that, in fact, you have set the appropriate reading order,
you have tagged your images with descriptions, you know that the links are working, you can actually
click on them to confirm. So there's a number of different things that you're doing with that
HTML preview to take your remediation process well beyond just the automated accessibility checkers.
Now one other thing I'll mention is when you do export versions of a document out of Equidox,
if you go to the History tab, we also give you a list of the warnings. So when I exported this
12 minutes ago with my first attempt. I did have eight warnings. And all of those warnings fell on
page one. So this is a nice little way of kind of consolidating the history of the document.
If it's a very long or very complex document, if you're exporting it and you have error messages,
you'll be able to go directly to the location of those errors because we give you a list of
where those errors are located in the description as to what that error is. So you have an idea on
how to go back and fix it so this is another helpful tool within Equidox. To just be able
to check out the old version of the document and make sure that you are in fact addressing all of
these errors. In this case, they all happen to be on page one, so it's pretty straightforward
just going back to page one and cleaning up all of those glaring mistakes that I made.
Okay, so that will sort of commence the demonstration portion on how we use the
HTML preview and our output checks. So with that said I want to return back to the webinar here
just to wrap things up on the slide deck here. Now again, we do appreciate everyone
taking the time out of their Wednesday to attend the webinar and chat with us. So if you have any
questions or if you'd like to see a more tailored demonstration too, with documents that maybe are
more relevant to you… If you'd like to just learn more about Equidox, please feel free
to reach out to us at EquidoxSales@Onixnet.com or through our website, Equidox.co. And like I said,
we are active on LinkedIn and we do have a website that has a ton of resources for learning new
things about accessibility. Talking more about accessibility checkers and PDFs and all of our
different services that we can offer and help your organization with. So with that said, thank
you very much everyone for attending. And Tammy, were there any questions that we need to address?
[Tammy] No there are only a few and I believe I have answered them.
[Dan] Okay great! Well thank you very much again everyone, and we look forward to
seeing you again next month for our next edition of Equidox Webinar Wednesdays!