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[Dan Tuleta] Okay everyone it is two 
o'clock and I do appreciate everyone  

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for joining us today we are here again for 
another edition of Equidox Webinar Wednesdays  

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today this week or this month rather we're going 
to be talking about What You Need to Know about  

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DoJ Digital Accessibility Guidance in 2022 as 
always we do encourage you to reach out to us  

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if you'd like to discuss any of the topics in 
more detail and if you'd like to set up maybe  

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a personal demonstration of our Equidox software 
or maybe talk about some PDF remediation services  

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that you may need please feel free to reach out 
to us at any time at Equidoxsales@Onixnet.com  

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our website is also www.Equidox.co so 
there's plenty of information there about  

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us and different ways of contacting us and you 
can also reach out via phone at 800-664-9638

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so before getting started as always I just want to 
quickly mention our parent company Onix networking  

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Onix is headquartered in Cleveland Ohio 
we've been in business for over 28 years now  

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basically we are a cloud consultancy primarily 
known for being a Google Premier Partner we're  

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also partnering with Amazon Web Services and our 
mission is to improve organizational efficiency  

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through cloud computing solutions now Equidox 
the reason that we're here today to talk about  

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more accessibility focused topics Equidox 
is a best-in-class PDF remediation software  

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we offer PDF remediation services as well so for 
any organizations that don't have the technical  

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background or the bandwidth to remediate 
documents on your own we can do that for you  

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we also offer expert accessibility services and 
lines with different consulting and web testing  

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VPAT completion so on and so forth 
and our mission is to ensure that  

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digital information reaches everyone through 
accessibility solutions this is just a quick  

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sampling of some of our customers so I'm just 
going to let this slide run with their logos

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and today on the webinar so anyone that has joined 
these webinars in previous months you're probably  

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familiar with me my name is Dan Tuleta I'm a 
sales engineer but I have a co-presenter today  

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with me Tammy Albee who is a content marketer 
here on the Equidox team and she's formerly of  

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the National Federation of the Blind so she comes 
to us with a wealth of experience and she's going  

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to be kind of working through the majority of the 
presentation today and passing it back over to me  

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so Tammy with that said I'm going to jump to 
the next slide and I'll hand it over to you

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[Tammy Albee] Thanks Dan great to be here looking 
forward to reviewing this topic with everyone  

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so I did work for the National Federation of 
the Blind for four years I worked in the NFB  

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NEWSLINE department which is a free newspaper 
service for people with print disabilities so  

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people who are blind or visually impaired 
or who have strokes or learning disabilities  

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any eligible person can use that service to access 
hundreds of newspapers all around the country  

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and so that was my main job there but when you're 
working with the National Federation of the Blind  

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you become involved in all of their initiatives 
and one of the biggest things that they do  

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is lobbying and advocacy for disability rights 
specifically for the blind as they would refer to  

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themselves as the blind so I spent a lot of time 
learning about that sort of thing and as these  

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new developments are happening with the Department 
of Justice it kind of brought back to me the  

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memories of when I worked there and the kinds of 
things that we experienced in the organization  

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trying to get more specific legislation 
passed for digital accessibility for everyone  

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so this slide shows you the increase in 
digital accessibility lawsuits over the last  

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five or six years 262 in 2016 jumps to 
814 in 2017 2314 in 2018 another big jump  

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despite the pandemic in 2019 and 2020 there 
were 2890 in 2019 and 3550 in 2020 and last year  

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in 2021 there were 4055 
digital accessibility lawsuits  

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these are an increase that just doesn't seem to 
be stopping people are continuing to have issues  

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with digital accessibility and it seems that a 
lawsuit is sometimes the best way to get their  

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concerns addressed when they cannot access 
information on someone's website or via  

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their digital information or other content 
like documents or social media or emails  

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you can go to the next slide Dan so some of these 
organizations that are being sued may surprise you  

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it's a lot of really well known organizations I'm 
sure a lot of you are familiar with the landmark  

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cases of Winn-Dixie which was one of the first 
Domino's Pizza which has been going back and  

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forth for the last several years lots of different 
decisions in different courts about Domino's Pizza  

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most recently the Supreme Court declined to 
hear the case feeling that it had already  

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been addressed in the district court but also 
organizations like Amazon Beyonce several banks  

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like JP Morgan Bank of America TD Americatrade 
and American Express and quite a number of various  

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educational entities including testing 
organizations like the Law School Admissions  

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Testing Certified Public Accountant exam and 
literally hundreds of colleges and universities  

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around the country have been sued because 
they did not provide adequate access to their  

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digital information either on their website or 
through their documents next slide please Dan so  

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the question is why are there so many lawsuits 
about digital accessibility and the reason  

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is that there aren't federal guidelines 
specific enough for non-government entities  

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to handle the questions that organizations are 
asking about digital accessibility people don't  

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know what they are supposed to be doing if you 
look at the built environment there are many  

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very specific specifications for buildings ramps 
bathrooms parking spaces how high the counters  

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are supposed to bein a retail organization how 
many bathrooms the measurements of everything  

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all that is very specified for the built 
environment but for digital accessibility there  

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really aren't any published guidelines for public 
entities so you can go to the next slide Dan  

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so it's not that there are no published 
guidelines at all under the federal law  

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accessibility laws you have that you're sort of 
divided into two sections you have Section 508  

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and that applies to federal employees or members 
of the public who need to access government  

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information and communication technology there 
are lots of specific regulations under Section 508  

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about what digital accessibility is supposed 
to look like however section 508 it does not  

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apply to public entities that is covered under the 
Americans with Disabilities Act which states that  

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no one is supposed to be discriminated against for 
any lack of ability or many other things related  

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to disability but there aren't any regulations 
under the ADA that specify what digital  

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accessibility is supposed to look like next slide 
Dan so because of this lack of information about  

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what digital accessibility means to the federal 
government there's been a lot of complaints from  

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public organizations to Congress to the Department 
of Justicee there's been a lot of correspondence  

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back and forth about this people asking for 
clarification and this lack of clarification  

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is what is resulting in so many lawsuits because 
they don't know what to do so they either don't do  

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anything or they do the best they can and then 
someone complains and because there's no clear  

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regulation the law has to be interpreted by the 
court so recently there were some correspondence  

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back and forth to the Department of Justice and 
we'll get to that in a little more detail later  

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but after years of not saying anything specific 
most recently the Department of Justice released  

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a statement that says “we've heard the calls from 
the public on the need for more guidance on web  

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accessibility particularly as our economy 
and society become increasingly digitized  

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this guidance will assist the public at 
understanding how to ensure that websites are  

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accessible to people with disabilities people with 
disabilities deserve to have an equal opportunity  

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to access the services goods and programs 
provided by government and businesses including  

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when offered or communicated through websites” 
and this was released by Assistant Attorney  

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General Kristen Clark she's part of the Justice 
Department Civil Rights Division next slide Dan

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so what does compliance with the Americans 
with Disabilities Act require? according to  

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the Department of Justice digital accessibility 
is a little bit flexible so that it will allow  

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organizations to include current and 
emerging technology they have said in various  

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correspondence over the years that they didn't 
necessarily want to pinhole everything because  

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there was so much new technology coming along and 
they wanted organizations to have the flexibility  

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to make their websites look like they wanted to 
and didn't want everything to be all templated and  

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look the same that's kind of the impression that's 
given by some of the correspondence back and forth  

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with them so they kind of say accessible digital 
resources means the information should be usable  

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with many different tools and many different 
technologies and how you provide that is up to you  

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and their recent guidance does refer to 
Section 508 regulations which as I said  

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before are specified for federal agencies and 
government websites and they also refer to that  

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and we'll talk about that in a little bit what 
that means so those are the regulations that they  

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are referring to without specifically saying 
this is what you're supposed to do next slide

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so I think most of you probably know but 
why is digital accessibility important  

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so as we've seen there are thousands of 
digital accessibility lawsuits every year  

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so that definitely is potentially 
going to affect every organization  

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that has a website or provides digital 
informationrecently the DoJ has finally released  

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some more specific guidance stating specifically 
the accessibility is part of the Americans with  

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Disabilities Act and they've also said that they 
are prioritizing digital accessibility compliance  

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and they're going to be reenforcing that the other 
things that we should think about when it comes to  

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digital accessibility are that it expands your 
market it increases your SEO including everyone  

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including people with disabilities means that 
you're including that portion of the population  

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in your efforts to interact with the public using 
your website so your audience is gonna expand if  

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you're including people with disabilities and they 
make up 20 to 25% of our population so that's not  

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a small piece of the audience to be excluding 
that's quite a number of people that you can  

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be reaching when your digital accessibility is 
compliant with the Americans with Disabilities  

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Act and naturally of course it is the right thing 
to do we don't want anyone to be left out we don't  

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want to exclude anyone from access to whatever 
our website is providing everyone should be  

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included everyone should have access to the same 
information that that everyone gets next slide Dan  

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so accessibility isn't just for people with 
disabilities as well they're about 20 to 25%  

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of the population has permanent disabilities 
like blindness or low visionthey could have  

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deafness or hard of hearing this includes mobility 
issues chronic health issues learning disabilities  

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but there are also temporary disabilities if you 
have an injury or an illness that might cause  

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you to have a hearing or a sight loss or mobility 
issues you could find yourself having difficulty  

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accessing digital information I had a issue 
with one of my contact lenses and I wasn't able  

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to wear them for a couple of days and I found 
myself using the accessibility features on my  

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phone because it was just easier than squinting at 
the tiny screen when I couldn't wear my contacts  

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and then there's other times when 
digital accessibility comes in handy  

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in the built environment if you're carrying a 
heavy load you might really like to be able to  

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use that ramp or an elevator or if you're on a 
noisy bus you want to look at a video you may  

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not want to have the sound on it you won't 
be able to hear it and maybe you don't want  

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people to know what you're looking at so digital 
accessibility comes in handy for all of us and I  

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think it's important to also remember that all 
of us are aging into disability as we get older  

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it becomes harder to see some of us are losing 
our hearing and if it hasn't happened to you now  

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it may in the future so digital accessibility is 
something that will be and can be for everyone  

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not just people who have permanent disabilities 
so I think it's really good to keep that top of  

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mind you never know who is going to need access 
to that information in an alternate fashion  

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so you want to really keep that top of mind when 
you're building your websites when you're building  

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your digital documents and make sure that 
everyone in every situation is able to access  

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next slide dan so when I worked at the NFB and 
I'd spend a lot of time reading all the old  

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historical articles and the materials 
thatwere kept as records at the NFB and the  

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the journey to getting the Americans with 
Disabilities Act signed is quite a storied one  

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you may find some interest in looking back 
through some of those NFB records to look at  

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that but in 1990 President Bush signed the 
Americans with Disabilities Act into law  

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and it says among other things that it prohibits 
discrimination against people with disabilities in  

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several areas including employment transportation 
public accommodations that's really important  

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because that's one of the things that digital 
accessibility can refer to if your website  

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is public place and many courts have said that it 
is then the Americans with Disabilities Act covers  

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that as part of public accommodations it also 
covers communications and access to state and  

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local local government programs and services and 
so that last bit also refers back to Section 508  

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that government entities need to make their 
digital content accessible to everyone and  

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in this left-hand picture you can see a number of 
people with disabilities they were protesting at  

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the capitol and lobbying for this law to be signed 
and some of them abandoned their wheelchairs and  

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crawled up the steps to the Capitol and I don't 
know if you've ever been there but it's a lot of  

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steps and it was summer so it was probably 
very hot there there's not a lot of shade  

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so they were pretty determined to be heard and 
this is one of the ways that they protested and  

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the right-hand picture shows President Bush 
with several representatives signing the law  

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and Dan can we go to the next slide so we 
mentioned WCAG a little bit earlier look is the  

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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and it was 
developed by an international group of experts all  

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around the world it is made upuh it was developed 
by the World Wide Web Consortium which is made up  

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of a number of organizations around the world who 
all are members and help work together to build  

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these web content accessibility guidelines and 
they're updated periodically but the four main  

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ideas that what covers are that all 
digital content should be perceivable  

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operable understandable and robust and if you have 
some interest in that there's a lot of information  

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on our website about WCAG and what perceivable 
operable and understandable look like so if  

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you're interested in that you can take a look at 
our website and get a little bit more information  

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next slide Dan so I'm not gonna go through the 
entire historywhen I originally built this deck  

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it was much longer and we decided it was a little 
bit long so those of you can see the slide there's  

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a number of underlined items on this when you get 
the slide deck after this webinar all of those  

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underlines connect to different articles with 
more information or source material for these  

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these items so you can take a look at those if 
you want some more information but I'll just  

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read through this really quickly in 2019 so that 
was a couple years ago there are number of rising  

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lawsuits which we saw in the beginning of the 
presentation incur spurred 103 congresspeople  

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to write to the Department of Justicee and 
request digital accessibility guidelines and  

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the DoJ responded with a letter saying just 
generally the Americans with Disabilities Act  

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applies to places of public accommodations 
we talked about a little bit earlier  

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and then last year several other congresspeople 
proposed the Online Accessibility Act in Congress  

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you can read a little bit more about that in 
that article but that particular law was not  

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supported by disability organizations because 
one of the things that the Online Accessibility  

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Act was aiming to do was to reduce the number 
of lawsuits organizations were complaining that  

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there were too many lawsuits they were spending 
a lot of time doing dealing with those but the  

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disability organizations didn't want this Act 
to go forward because what the Act did was it  

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set up a resolution system for complaints 
that delayed the ability to file lawsuits  

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until after this system of resolution was gone 
through but it was very lengthy it could be as  

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long as six months before they'd even be able 
to file a lawsuit if their concerns were not  

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addressed so that Act has not been signed into law 
I believe it has been tabled or lost in committee  

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but it is still on the books to be looked at by 
Congress at some point now this year the American  

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Foundation for the Blind which is not the same as 
the National Federation of the Blind it's another  

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blindness organization but along with them and 180 
other disability organizations including the NFB  

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sent a letter to the DoJ requesting 
digital accessibility regulations they  

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stated that it had been a long time and these have 
been promised which they had been and they'd even  

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been worked on by many organizations including 
the NFB I can remember when I worked there  

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the team that was helping to draft suggestions 
for what those regulations should look like  

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but they were withdrawn in 2017 so they never 
passed so this group of organizations this year  

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sent another letter requesting the regulations 
so the Department of Justicee responded almost  

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immediately I think it was the very next week 
which is pretty quick as far as government  

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goes and they responded with this Guidance 
that refers to Section 508 and Section 508  

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regulations incidentally include references 
to WCAG 2.0 AA and again that Guidance affirms  

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that digital accessibility is covered under the 
Americans with Disabilities Act next slide again  

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so what they said about the WCAG and 508 
standards was “existing technical standards  

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provide helpful guidance concerning how to 
ensure accessibility website features these  

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include content accessibility guidelines which are 
WCAG and the Section 508 standards which federal  

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government uses for its own websites” so if you're 
interested in more information there there's some  

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links here they'll be in the slide deck that'll 
be sent around after this webinar next slide Dan

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and again they've stated they will continue 
to enforce the ADA department is committed to  

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using its enforcement authority to ensure website 
accessibility for people with disabilities and to  

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ensure that the good service programs 
and activities the business and state  

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local governments make available to the public are 
accessible and these three links are some examples  

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of enforcement that they have completed so if 
you're interested in looking at those there's  

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some links there again it'll be in the side 
deck one is Project Civil Access the other  

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is an H&R Block case and there's another case 
called Peapod there are several other cases  

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related to this enforcement in these other 
materials if you follow these links next slide Dan

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so another thing to keep in mind is even 
though the federal guidance is still not  

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as specific as we would like many states have 
their own specific accessibility laws they can  

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vary from state to state and everything is still 
covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act  

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but many states reference WCAG and or 508 
guidelines many have financial penalties for  

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non-compliance and if you are doing business 
in a state even though it is not your state  

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you still have to follow their accessibility law 
so it behooves you to know the accessibility laws  

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for the states in which you are doing business 
as well as the state in which your business  

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exists and if you need to know more information 
about that we have also built a rather extensive  

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accessibility regulations guide it's 
divided by state and that link will  

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be in the slide deck as well or you can 
find it on our website next slide Dan

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so again these are some additional guidelines 
outside the united states in Canada the European  

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Union United Kingdom and Australia all of these 
links are live they will be in the slide deck  

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as well so if you need more 
information about those if you're doing  

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business in Canada or any of these other 
areas these laws also will apply to your  

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business and these are all digital 
accessibility laws next slide Dan

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so what should you be doing we we have slightly 
less vague guidance from the Department of  

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Justicee and a clear mission to enforce the 
Americans with Disabilities Act so what is it  

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that your organization should be doing so first 
thing you should do is find out what laws apply  

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to your organization obviously the ADA does you 
should find out about state laws in your area  

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you should be if you are upper management or 
if you are not upper management you should  

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be encouraging your corporate leaders 
organizational leaders to prioritize and  

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promote accessibility it should be part of your 
organizational culture it should be just sort  

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of how you do business every day it would be 
helpful to develop an accessibility statement  

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that talks about what accessibility looks like 
for your organization you want to evaluate your  

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current website and all of your digital resources 
and make sure they're accessible you want to train  

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your staff so that they're producing accessible 
content and fixing any that isn't and of course  

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you want to remediate any content that isn't 
accessible and make sure that as things are  

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changed and updated and edited accessibility is 
still included and if necessary you can delegate  

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accessibility tasks through your organization 
maybe you assign someone per department maybe  

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everybody has to be responsible for their own 
stuff maybe you need an accessibility coordinator  

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if you're not sure how to address this please 
contact us we are happy to help you figure out  

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the best way to set that up for your organization 
depending on your size and how things fit together  

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what your normal workflows are there are a lot of 
different ways to address that and we're happy to  

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help you with that and additionally you should 
always continue to provide ongoing accessibility  

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training on new technology and new tools spend 
some time picking tools that are going to save you  

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time and be available for as many of your staff 
as possible and I think that's a really good segue  

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I'm gonna hand this back to Dan now because one 
of the reasons that Equidox exists is to provide  

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accessible PDF files so back to you Dan
[Dan Tuleta] Great thank you Tammy so we  

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only have a few minutes left so I will be talking 
rather quickly through the remaining slides but  

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I will say that we have a another webinar that 
we recorded several months ago that kind of goes  

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into this topic in a more thorough way so we will 
provide a link to that in the inside of this slide  

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deck moving forward so you'll all receive this 
after the call so many organizations of course  

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use yes because it is a popular and a secure 
file type so many websites that we have audited  

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or provided some consulting on contain thousands 
or even hundreds of thousands of PDFs living on a  

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single website and even one inaccessible document 
can render your entire website deemed to be  

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inaccessible so despite the fact that you've 
gone through great lengths to make your  

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website accessible one PDF document sitting 
there that's untagged or very poorly tagged  

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can leave your whole website open for litigation 
if a user is trying to access it so PDFs also may  

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have many different content creators so that can 
lead to a ton of inconsistencies in the way that  

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they're designed and published which can make 
them a challenging format for sure to deal with  

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but we what we do know is that every PDF needs to 
be accessible so if you have PDFs floating around  

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on your website or on your intranet or on your 
content management system in any way they do need  

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to be accessible for not only your employees but 
also for anyone that might be visiting your sites  

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so this is what I was referring to earlier where 
we do have a full webinar regarding these steps to  

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PDF accessibility so where do we start in terms 
of addressing our PDF accessibility challenges  

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the first thing you want to do is assign a staff 
you want to evaluate the scope of the project  

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create a written plan that you can adhere to 
and kind of enforce throughout your organization  

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prioritize the documents typically starting with 
the most frequently interacted with documents  

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and then also working through the newest 
documents and the easiest to remediate  

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kind of going through the prioritization 
of those documents can get you  

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can get you started and get you through the bulk 
of the work in the shortest amount of time I also  

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want to choose a tool or a vendor so if you're 
going to outsource that document to the documents  

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to be remediated by professionals or if you'd like 
to bring a software tool into your organization  

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to assist you to self-serve or mediate and 
get people using that tool on a regular basis  

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then once you've chosen a tool or vendor you 
of course need to remediate the documents  

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and then validate the documents so confirm 
that they are in fact accessible that things  

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were not overlooked and then it's from there 
it's just general maintenance so constantly  

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doing the upkeep that's required any new 
content that's being producedanything  

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that you're introducing to your website just 
making sure that it is also accessible before you  

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post it and instead of undoing a lot of work that 
you've already doneso PDF remediation there's a  

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lot that goes into it just at a high level there's 
important things called tags and these tags are  

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identifying headings links applying alt text for 
images tagging lists tables fillable form fields  

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and also adjusting the reading order so we can 
talk more in detail about that during like maybe  

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a product demonstration if anyone is interested 
in chatting more so Equidox is of course our best  

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in class PDF remediation software we we aim to 
make it easier faster and just in general better  

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so we automatically can detect PDF elements we 
have a lot of artificial intelligence powering  

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our Table Detector and our List Detector we can 
also remediate PDF forms we can add alt text  

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images in one location we have an HTML preview 
and compliance warnings to really assist the user  

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and even if you're a novice remediator you can 
remediate documents with confidence knowing that  

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you've done things correctly but also because 
it's a web-based application you're able to  

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collaborate on larger and more complex documents 
so if you need subject matter experts or if you  

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need to work through it as a team through a 
document you certainly can do that with Equidox  

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so we do offer Equidox software licenses and 
we work on a concurrent user licensing model  

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we offer organization wide licenses so if you want 
to deploy this across your entire company you can  

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training and support is included 
with the purchase of licensing  

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and we also offer a an on-premise version so 
primarily Equidox is a cloud-based application but  

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if cloud security is a challenge for your 
organization we can deploy this on-premise  

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so you can keep everything inside your own 
four walls operating on your own network  

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we also offer professional conversion services 
so we have a team of expert PDF remediators so  

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if you'd like to talk to us about that feel free 
to send us documents just request a quote we will  

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upload those documents or you can send them to us 
we will remediate the documents inside of Equidox  

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and then we put it through a rigorous multi-step 
validation process including using screen readers  

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to replicate how a blind individual would 
interact with that document and then we  

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return the documents to you and they are fully 
accessible fully compliant ready to be posted back  

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to your website and the pricing for that servicing 
model is it's based on three different parameters  

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so volume how many documents are we talking about 
and how many pages in those documents that's a big  

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it's a big factor of course the complexity are 
they very complex documents are they more simple  

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like powerpoints or just word documents and then 
the delivery also matters too so if you need a  

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document returned to you within the next few days 
that can impact the price versus if you don't need  

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it back for several weeks or even a month or 
two just all these different factors kind of  

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getblended in to determine the pricing for the 
services but please feel free to reach out to  

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us if you have any questions or would like to 
talk to an account manager about how that works  

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00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:33,520
the typical workflow is of course 
documents are submitted we set deadlines  

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and the procedures are agreed upon a system 
for the document transfers between the two  

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parties is developed so if you want to send it 
to us via Google Drive or even some sort of FTP  

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transfer center remediated validated and returned 
to the customer but then oftentimes we have a lot  

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of customers using a hybrid model so I mentioned 
the software before as well as the services  

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so if you'd like to use the software internally to 
remediate as much as you possibly can on your own  

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and then you can send us the documents that are 
maybe more complex they have a short turnaround  

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time or if you have a large backlog that you just 
don't want to commit the team and the resources  

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to working through you can always work with us and 
let our team handle that for you and in the final  

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slide deck that we send around there is there will 
be a video link in here about how our Equidox PDF  

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software works so if you'd like to take a look at 
that this is just a short 10 minute or so video  

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00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:34,720
to give you a high level understanding of how the 
the software and the workflow that goes into it  

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in terms of remediating documents yourself and how 
that operates but please feel free again to reach  

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out to us and ask us for a separate looks like 
we are playing it on accident here there we go  

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now if and just just kind of wrapping things up 
here in the interest of time I know that we are a  

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couple minutes over so I do I do apologize for for 
going over today and I just want to be respectful  

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of everyone's time but again please feel free 
to reach out to us at EquidoxSales@Onixnet.com  

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our website is www.equidox.co or 
we can be reached at 800-664-9638

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00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:15,120
now we're also very active on LinkedIn 
and all the social media networks really  

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00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:20,000
so please feel free to connect with us there 
to hear the updates on Equidox and our team  

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00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:24,000
and what's going on we would love to interact 
with you so please feel free to reach out thank  

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00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:26,640
you very much everyone and have a great 
rest of your day we'll see you next month 

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[Tammy Albee] thanks Dan have 
a good afternoon everyone