AccessibilityNow® Publisher
Reach all your customers – Easily Output Accessible Non-Transactional Documents
Product Overview
Accommodating the needs of the blind, partially-sighted, and cognitively disabled individuals is not only a key component of a complete customer experience strategy but also a compliance requirement. AccessibilityNow Publisher provides rapid accommodation of published documents. These documents are typically static as opposed to transactional and are often stored as PDFs on a web page. The low volume of requests for these types of documents as well as costly, lengthy turnaround times to prepare documents for accessibility has constrained organizations from ensuring that all customers have access to documents that meet their needs. With AccessibilityNow Publisher, you can automatically tag and convert documents such as marketing literature, letters, books, manuals and other communications into print-ready Accessible PDF (WCAG and PDF/UA) or Accessible HTML5, ensuring compliance with global regulations.
For those who have documents they want to tag themselves and want to reduce the time spent doing the tagging, AccessibilityNow® Publisher software automates the PDF tagging process. It can be run in an automated manner under a workflow or RPA system or called through an API. It can achieve completion rates as high as 90%, significantly reducing the time it takes to make documents accessible.
Benefits
AccessibilityNow Publisher is ideal for:
- Real-time automated tagging applied during processing, concurrently with transformation for output. Tagging documents such as marketing material, letters, books, catalogs and other communications, and converting them into an Accessible document format.
- Providing support for a wide range of unstructured communications – marketing material, letters, books and more.
- Saving money and becoming, and staying, in compliance.
- Can be automated like a drop box
- Eliminates high percentage of manual remediation/tagging via AI and computer learning
- Eliminates significant manual quality assurance time
- Reduces turnaround from days to minutes
- Significantly reduces costs for remediation
- Converting documents into virtually any accessible format that can be requested by recipients including Accessible PDF (WCAG compliant), PDF/UA, or HTML5 (Accessible and responsive).
- Converting documents from any print ready format — PDF, AFP, Xerox Metacode, PCL and PostScript — so it can handle virtually all of your document remediation needs. It can also ingest image documents using OCR technology, converting these into accessible formats as well.
- After the automated tagging by AccessibilityNow Publisher, adding alternate text for images and tweaking the reading order can be done with a good remediation tool, such as AccessibilityNow Remediate.
Business Challenge
Document accessibility is becoming increasingly important as a result of updates to global regulations and the need for a comprehensive customer experience strategy. In order to be in compliance with a range of industry specific requirements as well as laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508, companies must provide documents in accessible format for the blind, partially-sighted, and cognitively disabled customers. However, the low volume of requests for these types of documents as well as costly, lengthy turnaround times to prepare documents for accessibility has constrained organizations from ensuring that all customers have access to documents that meet their needs.
Document remediation typically has been done manually or by using tools that require a person who understands tagging to remediate documents. Many organizations have a significant number of documents that are customer and employee facing, provided digitally or on paper, that are inaccessible. CrawfordTech is closing a gap in the customer experience by giving organizations a solution that serves the accessible needs of all their customers.
Customer Success Story
A Top 3 Health Insurance Company’s Journey to Accessible Documents
CrawfordTech was chosen to assist in making both transactional and static documents accessible and WCAG compliant due to the Section 508 ICT Refresh and ACA non-discrimination mandates.
Product Details
Meeting Accessibility Needs for All Types of Communications
AccessibilityNow Publisher extends the range of document types, including marketing collateral, manuals, letters, and books, making it easier than ever to convert unstructured documents to Accessible PDF or HTML in real time, minimizing the time needed for a specialist or designer. The solution was created for enterprise organizations that have large numbers of documents that need quick remediation into Accessible PDFs/HTML5. By reducing or even eliminating the manual remediation step, turnaround times are reduced from days to minutes, significantly reducing costs, making it possible for organizations in all markets to be in compliance and meet their customers’ needs.
By extending our accessibility solutions and services with AccessibilityNow Publisher, organizations can now easily support all customer communications, ensuring compliance and delivering a positive customer experience.
Considerations
No truly automated system is possible without requiring some parameters to ensure success. For AccessibilityNow Publisher, documents that meet these considerations ensure the best output:
- PDFs must be compliant to the ISO 32000 standard and utilize standard true type fonts
- ALT text for graphics and artifacts may need to be tagged separately
- Complex tables may need intervention, which can be easily done in AccessibilityNow Remediate
- Scanned PDFs cannot be made accessible without OCR or ICR conversion to text
It is currently integrated into AccessibilityNow DocMD and Dashboard. However, Publisher is a solution that was built with integration in mind and it has an open architecture allowing it to be added into existing workflows, which means it has the potential to be used in, and integrated into, any non-transactional accessibility workflow.
- Intel i7 quad-core CPU 2.5 GHz or higher
- 16GB RAM or more
- Fast local disk (SSD or 7200 RPM HDD) with 5GB free space
- Windows 10 or newer
- Windows Server 2012 or newer
- Linux with a 2.6.x or newer kernel
- Any hardware supported by a current release of z/OS
- Solaris 10 or newer
- AIX 7.x or newer
From Our Blog
WCAG 2.2: Unlock Accessibility Superpowers with CrawfordTech
WCAG 2.2 isn't just a buzzword. It's a modernization in making documents accessible to everyone. The latest 2.2 update unlocks inclusion for everyone, elevates user experience for all, and paves the road for future document accessibility compliance. Ready to be a WCAG 2.2 master? CrawfordTech’s solutions and vision can help you on your compliance and inclusion journey.
Colorado Rulemaking on Digital Accessibility is Evolving – Are You Ready?
On Friday, December 15th, the State of Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) submitted rulemaking changes relating to HB21-1110, also known as the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA). There’s a lot going on here, and we won’t summarize everything but instead will focus on one or two elements that relate directly to content.
Doug Koppenhofer | Dec 27, 2023
AccessibilityNow Publisher
