1 00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:12,160 Okay, so it is two o'clock here on my clock, so  I think we should get started. Welcome,   2 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:18,040 everyone. Thank you for joining another edition  of our Equidox Webinar Wednesdays. Today,   3 00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:23,000 we're just going to be talking a bit about  compliance and PDF accessibility, so just   4 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:28,480 appreciate everyone for joining. My name is Dan  Tuleta. I'm the Senior Sales Engineer here at   5 00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:36,840 Equidox, so I'll be running us through the webinar  today. Just a quick rundown of the agenda: first,   6 00:00:36,840 --> 00:00:42,560 we're just going to briefly talk about who Equidox  is, who we are, and what we do. We're also going   7 00:00:42,560 --> 00:00:48,080 to talk about PDF accessibility challenges  and our solution to that challenge. Also,   8 00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:52,840 we're going to be discussing why we need to make  PDFs accessible. We're going to be talking a bit   9 00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:57,880 about the legislative and lawsuit side of  things as well, and we will spend a good   10 00:00:57,880 --> 00:01:03,840 chunk of time doing an Equidox demo. So anyone  who hasn't seen our Equidox software before,   11 00:01:03,840 --> 00:01:09,280 we'll give you a rundown of how that works  and how it might apply to your PDFs and   12 00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:19,160 your documents and your accessibility challenges. Okay, so Equidox Software Company, our mission is   13 00:01:19,160 --> 00:01:25,720 to enable PDF accessibility through intelligent  automated solutions. So we are a leader in PDF   14 00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:33,480 accessibility. We have two main core components  to our business. We sell our Equidox software,   15 00:01:33,480 --> 00:01:37,360 so it's a software-as-a-service, a web-based  application, which we'll be going through today   16 00:01:37,360 --> 00:01:46,520 in the demonstration. It is intended for quick  and easy efficient remediation of PDF documents.   17 00:01:46,520 --> 00:01:54,720 We also offer an AI-based solution, so Equidox AI  is more for those recurring type use cases where   18 00:01:54,720 --> 00:01:59,960 you have a very high volume of documents  that have a lot of similarities in them.   19 00:01:59,960 --> 00:02:07,880 So think of bank statements or directories or just  documents where you're constantly updating them,   20 00:02:07,880 --> 00:02:13,320 or they're constantly changing, or you are  producing many thousands or millions of them on   21 00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:20,280 a recurring basis. Obviously, that's just a volume  of documents and pages that no human could handle   22 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:26,800 remediating on their own. So we can use Equidox  AI to train artificial intelligence models to be   23 00:02:26,800 --> 00:02:33,600 able to automatically apply the ACC and compliant  tags to those types of documents. So we won't be   24 00:02:33,600 --> 00:02:38,640 talking too much about Equidox AI today. That's  another webinar for another day. It's a totally   25 00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:44,840 different type of tool for a different use case,  but if you have any questions about Equidox AI   26 00:02:44,840 --> 00:02:49,640 and how it might apply to your documents, you  can definitely reach out to us. We'd be happy   27 00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:56,600 to kind of understand your situation and give  you a more personalized demonstration of it.  28 00:02:56,600 --> 00:03:03,160 So let's talk a little bit about the market  challenges. The challenge of PDF accessibility   29 00:03:03,160 --> 00:03:10,000 is no secret to anyone who is familiar with  traditional methods of tagging PDF documents. The   30 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:16,560 process can be extremely manual and time-consuming  for people who are using tools like Adobe Acrobat,   31 00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:23,200 for example, which is really synonymous with all  things related to PDFs. I like to refer to Adobe   32 00:03:23,200 --> 00:03:29,160 Acrobat as a tool that kind of resembles a Swiss  Army knife; you can do just about anything with a   33 00:03:29,160 --> 00:03:36,960 PDF document, but it is not built with the ease of  use or the ability to do things quickly in mind.   34 00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:43,880 So it's just unsustainable as a tool that you have  to use for large numbers of PDF documents because   35 00:03:43,880 --> 00:03:49,600 it just takes too long and it's very technical  and requires a lot of experience and expertise.  36 00:03:49,600 --> 00:03:55,440 So this really leaves organizations behind the  eight ball when it comes to getting caught up   37 00:03:55,440 --> 00:04:01,680 with their backlogs of PDF documents that are  still out there in circulation and also on top   38 00:04:01,680 --> 00:04:08,360 of making sure that all of the new content moving  forward is tagged and compliant. Because of how   39 00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:15,280 technical and tedious Acrobat is for tagging PDFs,  this often forces the remediation responsibility   40 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:21,360 into the lap of just a small set of experts who  are often unable to keep up with these backlogs   41 00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:27,800 and the constant flow of new documents and content  being produced and updated week over week, month   42 00:04:27,800 --> 00:04:34,320 over month. This will usually lead to issues with  quality because the amount of work that's required   43 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:43,520 is simply unsustainable if you're having to use  these traditional manual tools to tag the content.  44 00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:50,160 So why are we making PDFs accessible? Let's kind  of talk about why this is important. Many people   45 00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:55,200 have probably heard of laws like the Americans  with Disabilities Act and different compliance   46 00:04:55,200 --> 00:05:01,520 standards like Section 508 or WCAG, which  stands for the Web Content Accessibility   47 00:05:01,520 --> 00:05:07,400 Guidelines. But at a high level, our world  is becoming so much more reliant on digital   48 00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:14,360 information. And just as organizations have  to comply with the ADA by offering wheelchair   49 00:05:14,360 --> 00:05:20,080 ramps or handicap parking spaces and Braille  signage for their buildings, they also now   50 00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:25,480 must ensure that their digital content that they  are distributing to their customers and people   51 00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:31,160 is accessible to people with disabilities. So these articles that you see here on the   52 00:05:31,160 --> 00:05:36,200 slide deck, they are linked. So when we send out  the slide deck afterwards, if you'd like to read   53 00:05:36,200 --> 00:05:42,600 in more detail about the ins and outs of Section  508 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,   54 00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:46,640 feel free. We won't go too deep into the  weeds on that today because I'm not a lawyer,   55 00:05:46,640 --> 00:05:51,600 so I don't want to stand here and preach about  the exact letters of the law. But the fact   56 00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:57,080 of the matter is that all PDFs and all digital  content must be made accessible as we become such   57 00:05:57,080 --> 00:06:05,680 a more technologically based and digital world. So again, this is another article here that will   58 00:06:05,680 --> 00:06:11,320 be linked if you'd like to read more on the  topic. But recently, the Attorney General has   59 00:06:11,320 --> 00:06:16,280 signed a final rule on digital accessibility  under Title II of the ADA, mandating that all   60 00:06:16,280 --> 00:06:22,480 state and local governments must adhere to WCAG,  those Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1   61 00:06:22,480 --> 00:06:29,560 Level AA for content and mobile applications,  and this of course includes PDF documents.  62 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:39,640 So exceptions are not a free pass. There are  many instances where PDFs still need to be   63 00:06:39,640 --> 00:06:46,760 accessible. So the rule of thumb is, if a PDF  document is still actively in use or relevant   64 00:06:46,760 --> 00:06:52,160 to multiple individuals, it likely needs to  be made accessible. And if it's your document,   65 00:06:52,160 --> 00:06:55,880 it's your responsibility to make  sure that it's accessible. The   66 00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:59,960 Department of Justice has provided a  Fact Sheet, which is again linked here,   67 00:06:59,960 --> 00:07:06,800 citing numerous examples when exceptions do not  apply. We can also talk to you if you'd like to   68 00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:12,800 have more of a one-on-one discussion to discuss  your use case and your PDF accessibility backlogs   69 00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:19,040 to kind of help you put together a prioritization  of these documents. So if you're staring at a   70 00:07:19,040 --> 00:07:26,240 pile of hundreds or thousands of documents, it  can be quite an intimidating thing to look at.  71 00:07:26,240 --> 00:07:33,280 So how do you get started? Our general rule of  thumb would be to start with the newest content,   72 00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:38,400 the stuff that is going to be the most up-to-date  and most relevant, then work towards the easiest   73 00:07:38,400 --> 00:07:43,560 content. So when you can get through all of  the content that you can remediate quickly,   74 00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:49,640 then start thinking more about the older,  10-year-old types of reports that are probably   75 00:07:49,640 --> 00:07:54,320 not being interacted with as often, and also  the very complicated stuff, which could just   76 00:07:54,320 --> 00:08:00,720 be more of a strain on your resources in terms  of time because it's just very, very difficult   77 00:08:00,720 --> 00:08:05,960 to remediate certain types of those documents. We  can talk in more detail if you'd like to have more   78 00:08:05,960 --> 00:08:12,680 of a one-on-one consultation after the fact,  but just keep some of those things in mind.  79 00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:18,480 Okay, so to help quantify the scale of this  problem, Equidox conducted a survey in part   80 00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:24,880 with the National Federation of the Blind. And  what we found after surveying about 250 blind   81 00:08:24,880 --> 00:08:32,840 and low vision people is that they're finding that  two-thirds of their PDFs are not accessible. So   82 00:08:32,840 --> 00:08:37,400 just imagine the frustration that you would have  if everything that you were interacting with on   83 00:08:37,400 --> 00:08:42,600 a daily basis, you couldn't read two-thirds  of it. It would be extremely frustrating,   84 00:08:42,600 --> 00:08:46,840 and you would just be at a huge disadvantage  in terms of how you go about navigating the   85 00:08:46,840 --> 00:08:52,480 world. So that's what we're trying to change.  We're trying to make sure that we are closing   86 00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:59,040 the gap here. We don't want to see 67% of PDFs  inaccessible and unusable to a large section of   87 00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:04,760 the population. We want to make sure that we are  empowering organizations to do the right thing   88 00:09:04,760 --> 00:09:12,840 and get these documents up to the right level  of standards so that they can be compliant.  89 00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:17,720 Okay, so again, here is just some more data about  the rising number of lawsuits that organizations   90 00:09:17,720 --> 00:09:24,920 are facing over digital accessibility, which  again includes PDFs. So the theme is very clear:   91 00:09:24,920 --> 00:09:30,240 we are a highly digital society, and organizations  have a responsibility to ensure that their content   92 00:09:30,240 --> 00:09:35,800 can be interacted with by everyone, not only  fully sighted people. These increasing numbers   93 00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:41,080 of lawsuits are not going to stop increasing  until these organizations make the necessary   94 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:48,040 changes and improvements to their digital content.  So again, it's just not slowing down. The ADA   95 00:09:48,040 --> 00:09:53,640 is not going anywhere, and people are going  to continue to become more and more reliant   96 00:09:53,640 --> 00:09:59,320 on digital information. So we have to start  working through our backlogs and PDF problems.  97 00:10:01,760 --> 00:10:06,800 Okay, so when we are going through the  demonstration today, which we're about to move   98 00:10:06,800 --> 00:10:13,400 into in just a moment, I'm going to throw around  the word “tags” pretty often. So just anyone   99 00:10:13,400 --> 00:10:20,720 that's new to PDF accessibility, there are these  little elements in a document called tags that we   100 00:10:20,720 --> 00:10:28,800 are using Equidox to create or fix if the document  was already tagged. The tags are basically   101 00:10:30,080 --> 00:10:36,040 these little digital markers that are used to  identify and organize the content on the page. So   102 00:10:36,040 --> 00:10:42,240 there are different types of tags: you have tags  for elements like text, images, headings, links,   103 00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:49,440 lists, tables. The tags must be in the correct  order so that the PDF will be read in the correct   104 00:10:49,440 --> 00:10:53,840 order because obviously you can't have content  that is just being kind of scrambled around the   105 00:10:53,840 --> 00:10:59,000 page and read in any random order; it could render  an entire document useless if that were the case.   106 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:03,720 So that's really what we're going to be doing  inside of Equidox. We are going to be organizing   107 00:11:03,720 --> 00:11:11,800 these tags to make sure that this document is able  to be interacted with using assistive technology,   108 00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:17,000 a screen reader for example, and that the user  who is using that screen reader can extract the   109 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:21,560 exact same information that a sighted user  can by visually looking at it. So different   110 00:11:21,560 --> 00:11:26,640 elements must be read in a different way,  and depending on what type of element it is,   111 00:11:26,640 --> 00:11:31,800 that's going to determine the type of tag that we  apply to it. So just to give everyone a heads-up,   112 00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:38,040 when we're throwing around the term  “tags,” this is what we're referring to.  113 00:11:38,040 --> 00:11:44,080 Okay, so we are going to jump into the Equidox  demo now, and the demo itself will be, of course,   114 00:11:44,640 --> 00:11:51,920 recorded. So we will link it here inside of the  slide deck. If you want to share this amongst   115 00:11:51,920 --> 00:11:55,800 your organization, show it to different  people, feel free to send that along,   116 00:11:55,800 --> 00:12:03,680 and we'll insert the link to the video as well. Okay, so let's jump over here to Equidox now.   117 00:12:03,680 --> 00:12:09,800 Equidox is—this is my Equidox application. If  you notice here, I'm operating directly in my   118 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:15,200 browser. So what's nice about operating in the  browser is I'm not tied to any one individual   119 00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:20,960 computer. Equidox is a web-based application; you  can interact with it from literally any computer,   120 00:12:20,960 --> 00:12:26,360 assuming you have an internet connection, of  course. We also work with a concurrent user   121 00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:32,680 licensing model. So what that allows for is if  you, let's say, have 10 concurrent licenses as   122 00:12:32,680 --> 00:12:39,160 an organization, that means any 10 people can use  Equidox at the same time. Maybe you have 20 or   123 00:12:39,160 --> 00:12:45,760 30 or 40 people that theoretically might be using  it for a project that they're working on, but you   124 00:12:45,760 --> 00:12:51,320 don't necessarily expect them to be sitting there  for 40 hours a week remediating PDFs. Oftentimes,   125 00:12:51,320 --> 00:12:56,640 people just need to log in for 10 or 15 minutes  and work on a document. When they log out,   126 00:12:56,640 --> 00:13:00,760 that seat that they were using is now  available for someone else to log in.  127 00:13:00,760 --> 00:13:05,520 So it's very flexible in how you go about  deploying it to a larger group of users   128 00:13:05,520 --> 00:13:12,320 because you don't have to purchase an annual  subscription to anything for a user that just   129 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:17,200 might need to use it once a week or once a month,  very infrequently. So you're not having to install   130 00:13:17,200 --> 00:13:23,360 and update and maintain software across every  one of these individual computers. The other   131 00:13:23,360 --> 00:13:29,400 nice thing about being web-based is that Equidox  is naturally collaborative. So what that means is   132 00:13:29,400 --> 00:13:35,240 you can share documents with other users in your  account. So if you needed help on a document,   133 00:13:35,240 --> 00:13:40,880 you could ask a subject matter expert because  maybe there are diagrams or charts that you're not   134 00:13:40,880 --> 00:13:46,680 really sure how to describe with alternative text,  and you don't want to make assumptions or guess   135 00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:52,080 at what you should be typing in for alt text. So  you'd rather share that with the person who might   136 00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:57,840 know more about that subject. You can also work  together on the same document at the same time as   137 00:13:57,840 --> 00:14:04,120 another user. So if you have a very large document  with a tight deadline, maybe, let's just say it's   138 00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:10,160 a 500-page-long document, that's a very daunting  task for any one person to just kind of tackle   139 00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:15,440 500 pages on their own. But maybe you've got five  really strong remediators and everyone can take   140 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:21,200 a 100-page section of it. Now you're getting that  project done in 20% of the time because you've got   141 00:14:21,200 --> 00:14:27,400 all hands-on deck working through that really  large document that has that tight deadline.  142 00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:31,480 Okay, so what we're going to do is, I'm actually  going to import a document for us to work on   143 00:14:31,480 --> 00:14:35,840 today. What we're looking at now is just kind  of a list of documents that will populate as you   144 00:14:35,840 --> 00:14:42,000 start to import PDFs. Then your five most recent  documents will show up here across the top. If I   145 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:46,760 go to the Import Document tab, though, it will  take me to this screen. I can either click to   146 00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:52,160 open up the folders on my hard drive, or if I  have my folders already open, I can just drag   147 00:14:52,160 --> 00:14:57,920 and drop a document or multiple documents into  this gray area. That document will quickly upload   148 00:14:57,920 --> 00:15:04,560 to the cloud, and then this blue Import button  becomes available. When I press the Import button,   149 00:15:04,560 --> 00:15:10,560 this will start an automated process where  Equidox is now evaluating this document for   150 00:15:10,560 --> 00:15:15,960 things like existing tag structure, which may or  may not be there—we don't quite know yet. So if   151 00:15:15,960 --> 00:15:20,760 the document has been previously tagged, you  can use that existing tag structure and kind   152 00:15:20,760 --> 00:15:27,240 of clean things up and make adjustments to what's  there. Or in some cases, you might prefer to just   153 00:15:27,240 --> 00:15:31,560 start over from scratch. That's the thing with  PDFs; you don't always know what you're going to   154 00:15:31,560 --> 00:15:35,520 get because you might not have had anything to  do with designing this document. It might have   155 00:15:35,520 --> 00:15:40,560 been published 15 years ago from some old,  deprecated software, and you don't know what   156 00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:45,280 you're going to get into until you start working  on that document. That's the challenge of PDFs;   157 00:15:45,280 --> 00:15:49,600 they're all unique. They come from different  tools, different designers. Some are new,   158 00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:55,280 some are old. So it's a very broad spectrum of  what you can get inside of a PDF, and that's   159 00:15:55,280 --> 00:16:01,200 really what makes the remediation side of things  kind of challenging but also kind of fun because   160 00:16:01,200 --> 00:16:06,600 it's kind of like putting together a puzzle. In  Equidox, think of Equidox as a productivity tool   161 00:16:06,600 --> 00:16:13,640 that helps you solve that puzzle a lot faster  than you can with other, more manual tools.  162 00:16:13,640 --> 00:16:16,960 Okay, so if I click here on the thumbnail  for this document that I just imported,   163 00:16:16,960 --> 00:16:23,040 it will take me into the Document Detail page.  Inside of the Document Detail page, I can see some   164 00:16:23,040 --> 00:16:28,440 thumbnails here. So I have two thumbnails for the  two pages in this PDF. I have some basic features   165 00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:34,440 up here to, like, search for pages. If I need to  go to page 453, I can just jump straight to it. I   166 00:16:34,440 --> 00:16:39,480 don't have to scroll through all those thumbnails.  I have buttons here to export this back to a PDF,   167 00:16:39,480 --> 00:16:44,200 which I'm not really ready to do yet. I  could share this document with other users,   168 00:16:44,200 --> 00:16:50,280 of course. So if I needed to ask for help on this  PDF for whatever reason, I can. And I, of course,   169 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:55,520 can delete the document, which I'm not going to do  yet either because we haven't done anything to it.  170 00:16:55,520 --> 00:17:01,280 Down below, there are some properties of  the document. So this is the file name here,   171 00:17:01,280 --> 00:17:05,800 and if you notice, in this case, the file  name and the title are identical. You can   172 00:17:05,800 --> 00:17:11,600 always update the document title if one is  not provided. Equidox, at a bare minimum,   173 00:17:11,600 --> 00:17:16,160 will fill it in for you with whatever the file  name is because that's an often overlooked part   174 00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:22,000 of PDF accessibility. People will forget to add  a title, and then that's an automatic failure   175 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:27,320 from an accessibility standpoint. So if you  want to, you can always adjust your title to   176 00:17:27,320 --> 00:17:32,440 make sure that it's something that's plain  English and easily understood. You can add   177 00:17:32,440 --> 00:17:37,120 or edit your author if you want. So if you have  an author already there, it will be in there,   178 00:17:37,120 --> 00:17:42,520 or if you want to add one, you can. And then one  other property would be the language attribute,   179 00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:47,720 which Equidox will set to English for you,  just assuming that the document is in English,   180 00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:52,160 which most documents are for most of our  customers. But if you hit the drop-down menu,   181 00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:58,360 you can change the language attribute to whatever  language matches the content of the document. So,   182 00:17:58,360 --> 00:18:04,640 for example, if you have, let's say, a Polish  document, you don't want an English screen reader   183 00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:11,640 trying to read Polish words; that would sound very  silly to a Polish speaker. So that's how you can   184 00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:17,320 adjust the language attribute, and you can always  save your properties if you make any updates.  185 00:18:17,320 --> 00:18:21,600 One other important thing is the Images tab.  Now, this document only contains a couple of   186 00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:27,280 images in it, but what's nice about the Images  tab is you get this sort of consolidated list   187 00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:33,160 of the images together. So if you know exactly  what these images represent, you can quickly   188 00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:37,880 streamline your approach to writing the alt  text. Or, you might prefer to actually get into   189 00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:44,440 the document itself and make those decisions  about alternative text once you're in there.  190 00:18:44,440 --> 00:18:51,240 So we'll jump into the first page now. And when I  get into the first page here, what I immediately   191 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:57,160 notice about the PDF is suddenly there are these  yellow boxes that are kind of like covering up the   192 00:18:57,160 --> 00:19:05,320 content. These yellow boxes are what we refer  to as reading zones. The reading zones are,   193 00:19:05,320 --> 00:19:09,440 again, like similar to the tags. These are  what's going to create the tags when we   194 00:19:09,440 --> 00:19:14,920 export the PDF. So we are going to use these  reading zones here and organize all of this   195 00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:19,520 information on the page to make sure that it  is going to line up with how a screen reader   196 00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:24,880 user would be interacting with this content. If I don't like the initial detection that   197 00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:29,800 I've been given, so for example, in this case,  I don't really want every line of text to be   198 00:19:29,800 --> 00:19:36,360 in its own individual zone, I can move this  Zone Detection slider from left to right,   199 00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:40,880 and you'll see how it kind of changes the  granularity of those reading zones. As you   200 00:19:40,880 --> 00:19:45,640 bring it way over to the right, you get kind of  like a zoomed-out view of all of the data on the   201 00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:50,920 page. Whereas if you bring it further to the left,  it gets much more microscopic and focused on the   202 00:19:50,920 --> 00:19:55,360 data. You're typically going to find somewhere  in the middle that seems to work pretty well for   203 00:19:55,360 --> 00:20:00,840 whatever page you're working on. In this case  here, the detection level of eight seems to be   204 00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:06,320 fine. So now I've got all of my zones in the right  location, I have the right number of zones, and I   205 00:20:06,320 --> 00:20:12,600 can start making changes to these individual zones  to make sure that they're all organized correctly.  206 00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:17,520 One other thing you can do is you can always press  the Reorder button as well. Reading order is a   207 00:20:17,520 --> 00:20:22,840 critical part of PDF accessibility. If content  is not read in the correct order, it can render   208 00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:28,800 everything useless. Just think of like a newspaper  article with three columns. If the screen reader   209 00:20:28,800 --> 00:20:33,880 is just reading clear across the page, you're  going to hear just a bunch of fragmented sentences   210 00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:38,880 from totally separate columns, which would make  no sense to anyone. It would be impossible to   211 00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:43,200 understand that document. So reordering the  content to make sure that everything is going   212 00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:50,400 to be read either in a one-column, left-to-right,  top-to-bottom layout, or a multi-column option,   213 00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:56,600 depending on the layout of the page, is  another critical part of PDF accessibility.  214 00:20:56,600 --> 00:21:03,160 One other thing before we start making any  changes to the structure of our tags here:   215 00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:10,040 if I press this button on my—the button here that  looks kind of like a computer monitor—it will open   216 00:21:10,040 --> 00:21:17,240 up a separate tab in your browser. In this browser  preview, what you get is this HTML rendering of   217 00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:23,320 the page that you're currently working on. The  reason that this HTML is important is because   218 00:21:23,320 --> 00:21:29,640 instead of having to interact and understand  the complexities of the tag tree, you just get   219 00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:35,400 this very simple linear representation of how  would a screen reader read this page if I were   220 00:21:35,400 --> 00:21:41,840 to just stop working and export the document.  This shows you the reading order. Of course,   221 00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:47,480 if you have tables, lists, or links, or anything  that is different in the document besides just   222 00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:52,600 standard text, you'll see all of that proof  here in the HTML preview. So we'll be going   223 00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:57,600 back and forth from the preview several times  just so you can kind of see how things change.  224 00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:02,360 If I go back to the PDF, I'm going to start making  some changes here. One of the important parts of   225 00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:07,800 PDF accessibility is heading structure. Heading  structure is a way that screen reader users can   226 00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:14,160 navigate the document. They can jump from section  to section and drill down into a subsection of a   227 00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:19,200 section, and they can find that information that  they're looking for in a much quicker way. If   228 00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:26,120 everything is just tagged as text, there's really  no navigation help with a million little P tags   229 00:22:26,120 --> 00:22:31,080 or text zones. In this case, when the user  is trying to navigate through that content,   230 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:38,120 they get very lost and they can't find that  specific section that might be in Chapter 13   231 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:43,680 of that book. So the heading structure is  what will allow them to quickly find that.  232 00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:48,000 Now, headings can be set very quickly in  Equidox. You can see over here that this   233 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:53,400 is a text zone by default, but if I hit  the dropdown menu, I can select Heading,   234 00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:58,720 and it will change to a Heading Level One.  However, I prefer to use keyboard shortcuts.   235 00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:05,200 So when I want to set a Heading Level One, I just  tap one on my keyboard, and it instantly changes   236 00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:12,080 to a Heading Level One. I'm going to set this as  an H2 and I'll set these as H3s. I'm just hitting   237 00:23:12,080 --> 00:23:17,960 the corresponding number on my keyboard, and what  we'll see changing in the HTML preview is the   238 00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:24,480 font size now gives us that visual confirmation  that we've actually set that element as an H1,   239 00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:30,440 and these are—that's an H2, and then we obviously  have our H3s here with the bold font that kind of   240 00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:37,160 stands out compared to the regular text that  we have. We also have a couple of lists on   241 00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:42,240 this page. So these lists right now, they are not  tagged as lists, but you can understand that list   242 00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:47,920 structure is very important because all of these  list items have a relationship with each other,   243 00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:52,280 and they are nested inside of another  list item, which also has a relationship   244 00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:57,320 to the list item it is partnered with. So, the structure of a list is critical. If   245 00:23:57,320 --> 00:24:02,600 you don't tag it as a list, it will just read  these elements as kind of like strange run-on   246 00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:08,680 sentences with no punctuation. You can imagine  the confusion that could cause. So we want to   247 00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:13,360 make sure that we're handling our lists properly. Now, by default, it's a text zone, but all I have   248 00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:19,960 to do is hit "L" on my keyboard and nudge my list  detection slider. You'll see a theme of sliders   249 00:24:19,960 --> 00:24:26,360 today to make this a lot easier and faster.  Instantly, I've detected those five list items,   250 00:24:26,360 --> 00:24:31,920 and if I go back to my preview, I will see  the proof of that. Instead of having just a   251 00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:39,440 big weird sentence, I now have five distinct list  items that are delineated by these bullet points.  252 00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:46,200 This is a nested list, which is exponentially  more complicated to tag manually in Adobe Acrobat.   253 00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:51,080 You'll hear horror stories of Acrobat users  fighting with nested lists because there are   254 00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:55,680 so many tags that you have to build, and they all  have to be placed in the correct order. There's a   255 00:24:55,680 --> 00:25:01,200 million ways to do it wrong and only one way to  do it right, so it's very tedious and slow. But   256 00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:06,600 with Equidox, we just hit "L" and nudge our  slider, letting the artificial intelligence   257 00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:12,800 quickly figure out that okay, that's a list, and  inside of that first list, we have another list,   258 00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:18,680 and then we even have a third layer to that list.  So very quickly, if we go and look at our preview,   259 00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:24,400 we're able to build that nested list structure,  and all of those tags will be automatically   260 00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:31,480 produced for us when we export the PDF. We also have a couple of images on this page. Now,   261 00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:37,280 images, of course, need a description or they  need to be artifacted. For this image here,   262 00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:42,680 it's the first iteration of the logo. As a  general rule of thumb, I might give a logo   263 00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:48,160 a description one time in a document. If this  logo keeps repeating itself throughout, I'm   264 00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:53,800 not going to keep describing it. That's just too  much work to keep typing in the same alt texts,   265 00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:59,080 but also a screen reader user doesn't need to hear  it page after page. They don't need to be reminded   266 00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:05,800 that there's a logo there. So I'll simply type in  "Equid logo" for now, and that will give me my ALT   267 00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:10,560 description that's required for that image. Then down here, we have another image where,   268 00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:15,480 again, it's another iteration of our logo,  but this one has a dog in the picture. This   269 00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:21,560 is really just kind of a decorative image; it's  just there for visual aesthetics. It's not really   270 00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:26,640 adding any new or unique information to the PDF  itself. So if you want to get rid of an image,   271 00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:31,960 you can just hit backspace on your keyboard. The  zone itself will disappear. We're not visually   272 00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:36,280 removing the image from the document; we're just  making sure that it's artifacted so that a screen   273 00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:42,880 reader will pass right over it instead of stopping  to read just redundant alt text. And again, in the   274 00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:50,080 preview, that image is now gone, and we're just  left with the text-based content with the lists,   275 00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:55,720 the headings, and of course, the image  at the very top of the reading order.  276 00:26:55,720 --> 00:27:01,160 Okay, so we'll jump over to the next page  here. On this page, we have a couple of   277 00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:07,240 tables. Tables are another one of those things  in PDFs that are extremely time-consuming,   278 00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:11,800 but I'll show you how quickly we can handle  tables inside of Equidox. All I'm going to   279 00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:17,560 do is put a zone by clicking and dragging around  the table. I'm going to hit "T" on the keyboard to   280 00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:23,960 change it to a table and I'll go into the table  editor. Blink and you miss it, but if I just   281 00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:28,760 nudge these detection sliders back and forth,  you can see that it will instantly figure out   282 00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:34,640 the structure of this table. All of my cells have  been identified, and all I now have to do is press   283 00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:41,320 this checkbox to give myself a table summary. So when I go back to my PDF, all of those little   284 00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:47,640 text zones that were there before have now been  replaced by a single table zone. And if I go into   285 00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:54,920 my preview, we will see that we have a nice  clean HTML table compared to the other table,   286 00:27:54,920 --> 00:28:00,440 which we haven't yet addressed. You can imagine  how useless this would be to hear through a   287 00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:06,240 screen reader. None of these numbers would make  any sense if they're not structured as a table.  288 00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:14,160 Again, we will solve this table very easily by  just drawing a zone, hitting "T" on our keyboard,   289 00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,840 and going into the table editor.  Again, if you blink, you'll miss it,   290 00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:22,800 but you just have to nudge the sliders  to wake up the artificial intelligence,   291 00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:28,440 and all of the cells have been identified. The only other thing with this table—well,   292 00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:36,400 there are two small things. The years 2024 and  2025 are actually column headers that straddle   293 00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:41,960 four separate columns, so we just want to make  sure that we are spanning by holding shift on   294 00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:50,120 our keyboard and selecting above Q1, and just  holding shift and then selecting above Q4. We   295 00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:54,640 can then either hit the span button or  just press "S" on our keyboard. Again,   296 00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:59,960 I'll do the same thing here for 2025. So what that allows for is for the year to   297 00:28:59,960 --> 00:29:06,640 just be a column header that has four sub-columns  underneath it. The other thing is that this table   298 00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:13,720 is somewhat unique in that it actually has a  second level of headers. So not only is 2024 a   299 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:18,760 column header, but also the individual quarters  within the year need to be set as headers as   300 00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:25,720 well. All we have to do is hit the up arrow  to change the column header from one to two,   301 00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:30,920 and then this will indicate to Equidox you  want the top two rows to be set as your column   302 00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:36,440 headers. And here you can see that bold font  that reflects that change that you've just made.  303 00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:43,560 So, the logic here is that if a user is inside  this data cell, they are aware that they’re in   304 00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:49,880 the sales row for the year 2024, and more  specifically, they’re in the fourth quarter   305 00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:56,320 of 2024. All of that structure is built for them  so that they can freely navigate this table and   306 00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:02,000 always understand exactly which columns  and rows they’re associated with. Again,   307 00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:05,760 hit the checkbox here, and Equidox will  programmatically write a table summary   308 00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:11,160 for you. It’s one less thing for you to do. If I save the table and close out, I'm left with   309 00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:18,440 the single table zone. I realize we are right  up against time here. I haven’t covered form   310 00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:24,040 fields in detail, but at a high level, for those  of you dealing with form documents, the main thing   311 00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:31,640 is to make sure that you're adding tooltips. I can  enter tooltips here, such as “Enter today’s date,”   312 00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:53,840 “Enter first name,” “Enter last name,” “Enter date  of birth,” and “Select if US citizen” or “Select   313 00:30:53,840 --> 00:31:01,360 if non-US citizen.” Adding tooltips is  as simple as adding an ALT description,   314 00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:10,360 but you can build these tooltips really quickly. Now, our page is more or less handled. We could   315 00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:13,760 probably make some small adjustments to  the reading order of these form fields,   316 00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:19,160 but in the interest of time, we can always just  press the reorder button to consolidate things,   317 00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:27,240 and that will correct most issues. So, let’s back out of the document and   318 00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:35,120 go to the Export tab. All I need to do is hit  “Generate PDF,” and Equidox will produce this   319 00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:39,800 brand-new document for me. It will be the  exact same document that we started with,   320 00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:45,120 so you’ll see nothing has changed about our  PDF—it’s still the same. However, everything we   321 00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:52,520 built in Equidox, and what we validated with the  HTML preview, is going to appear in the tag tree.  322 00:31:52,520 --> 00:32:03,760 If I download this document and save it to  my desktop with a suffix to indicate it’s the   323 00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:09,040 remediated version, I can open it in Adobe  Acrobat. The original document was completely   324 00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:21,960 untagged, but the one we just built has everything  tagged—our lists, tables, form fields, and more.   325 00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:30,822 This document will pass the accessibility checker  if that’s your goal. You’ll only see two warnings:   326 00:32:30,822 --> 00:32:33,240 one about reading order and another about color  contrast. These warnings are not issues but   327 00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:43,360 notifications that you need to handle reading  order and color contrast in a different tool.  328 00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:58,160 That said, I know that was a lot of information,  and we’d be more than happy to discuss Equidox   329 00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:06,360 as a solution with you and your organization on  a more one-to-one basis. If you have any sample   330 00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:15,735 documents or questions about the tool, please  feel free to reach out. You can email us at   331 00:33:15,735 --> 00:33:22,560 EquidoxSales@Equidox.co, call us at 216-529-3030,  or visit our website at www.Equidox.co.   332 00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:33,480 We’re also on various social media platforms. Thank you all for attending today. I apologize   333 00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:37,080 for being long-winded and going a few  minutes over, but we appreciate your   334 00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:43,960 participation. Please feel free to reach  out if you have any questions at all.