Solutions

Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform (EDAP)

Automated Document Testing and Remediation

Your organization is committed to inclusion and accessibility for all, GREAT! Now you need a strategy to get your documents to be accessible to people who are blind, have low vision or have cognitive challenges and keep them accessible into the future. You need an Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform to be a cornerstone of your implementation. Without it, you will waste a lot of time and effort and never reach your goal of creating fully compliant and usable documents.

Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform Overview

An Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform is a comprehensive platform that addresses all of the needs for customer communications to be accessible, compliant, and usable, utilizing modern technology in an enterprise environment. It includes all the components needed for a successful program to address the following capabilities you need:

1

Find, test and fix the content on your web sites, such as PDF and MS-Word documents.

2

Outsource your needs for alternate formats such as braille and large print.

3

Put an automated process in place to create accessible digital documents from your transactional applications.

4

The platform must provide support for making all three types of documents (static, transactional and hybrid) into accessible documents.

Roll over each document type for more information.

Static Documents

Static documents encompass all remaining document types; these are generally created by a variety of departments, usually with fixed and unchanging content which are in diverse formats and are used by many different people over a long period of time before being revised. Lacking dynamic or variable components, static documents are primarily utilized to offer information that is not frequently revised or modified. Examples include brochures, manuals, data sheets reference guides, and forms.

Transactional Documents

Transactional documents possess a recognizable and cyclical format, displaying repetitive elements combined with variable data like names, amounts, and dates. They typically serve as evidence of the transaction’s occurrence and are used for legal, financial, and operational purposes. Examples include invoices, EOBs, statements, contracts, and shipping confirmations. These documents normally contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Private Health Information (PHI) that require secure handling. Whether being delivered digitally or through the post office, timeliness of delivery is very important.

Hybrid Documents

Some documents also fall into both transactional and static classifications. Some examples of these include contracts that outline consistent terms while also recording specific transactional details, and user manuals that provide unchanging instructions while also documenting transaction-related information. Examples of these include ANOCs (Annual Notices of Change), EOCs (Evidence of Coverage) and MRFPs (Management Report Fund Performances).

Static

Transactional

Hybrid

Once you have robust solutions in place for these, you are well on your way to solving your organization’s accessible document challenge. You can then ensure that your documents are all compliant with current accessibility standards. It is also good to make sure that the documents are not only compliant, but are also usable by a person needing to read the documents.

Key Benefits

The benefits of an Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform are many and varied. Here are some of the most important benefits:

Cost Savings

Savings from having a single solution for all accessible document creation.

Savings can be achieved by eliminating duplicate work, which is common in unsynchronized workflows.

Predictable costs going forward by future-proofing.

Risk Mitigation

Reduces the risk of regulatory fines and lawsuits by hosting fully compliant documents.

Improved compliance by using proper up-to-date standards.

Effective Workflows and Satisfied Customers

Faster time to market for critical documents.

Reduced confusion by having a central location for accessible documents.

Improves Customer satisfaction by providing documents that are usable and accessible.

Assessing Your Organization’s Document Accessibility Requirements

In order for your organization to determine what is needed for a Successful EDAP, ask yourself the following questions:

What standards need to be supported? Examples are WCAG, PDF/UA, HHS.
Are alternate formats such as braille, large print, e-text and audio required?
In which formats must digital documents be delivered? Examples are PDF, HTML, MS-Word.
Are documents made available to recipients through public-facing websites and secure portals?

Is the organization doing this only for legal compliance purposes or is user experience a consideration too?
Will digital document recipients be required to self-identify their need for accessible documents or will they all receive accessible documents automatically?
Does your organization have a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiative? Will your document accessibility initiative be part of the DEI initiative?

Key Requirements for a Successful Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform

In order to be a strategic solution, an Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform must address all of the needs for customer communications to be accessible, compliant, and usable, utilizing modern technology in an enterprise environment. The Enterprise Document Accessibility Platform must be capable of:

Compliance

Achieving 100% compliance with document accessibility standards.

Converting all documents into accessible documents that are usable by all readers.

Committed to supporting future accessibility standards, which are evolving quickly.

Provide an easy method of transitioning to new standards when they are released.

Documents

Supporting all the different document types used to communicate with customers, partners and employees.

Providing unique capabilities for both static and transactional documents.

High Productivity

Delivering a verified solution for generating accessible transactional documents in high volumes.

Using AI functionality to keep setup and ongoing costs to a minimum.

Versatility in Solutions to meet any Enterprise need: On-Premises, Cloud-Based, Services, or a fusion of these options.

Unique EDAP Requirements

Transactional Documents

Static Documents

Ability to provide on-request remediation as well as batch processing needs.
Ideal for on-demand remediation of documents from repositories.
Handling both day-forward documents as well as historical documents.
Efficient Remediation Process. Ability to handle large volumes of data, providing automated data accessibility compliance validation and streamlined remediation workflows. Such workflows can provide data validation, data transformation, and data enrichment, facilitating the identification and resolution of data issues in an efficient manner.
A Rules-Based template creation process that utilizes AI and guarantees a streamlined workflow, allowing efficient and cost-effective processing of hundreds of thousands of documents while delivering compliant and fully usable output.
Processing the volumes of transactional documents created in the enterprise.
Accessibility Solutions focused on establishing a remediation workflow that automates the process and seamlessly integrates with any digital delivery mechanism.
Ability to deliver full WCAG, PDF/UA and/or HHS compliance in any transactional and static workflow.

Ability to scan an entire website looking for PDF (and possibly MS-Word) files and testing them to see if they are compliant with whatever accessibility standard meets your needs.
Easy to use remediation tool that is designed utilizing AI to handle large numbers of PDF files without using accessibility experts.
Ability to outsource remediation of documents when there is a backlog of inaccessible documents.
Ability to test remediated documents to ensure they are compliant using the same validation tool that is used in scanning the website.
Ability to scan document repositories and validate the accessibility compliance of the documents within.
Ability to scan documents in a Learning Management System (LMS) to ensure compliance of documents in training courses.

Meeting the EDAP Requirements with AccessibilityNow®

There is only one platform available that meets the requirements stated above. That platform is Crawford Technologies’ AccessibilityNow platform. The components in the platform are all best-of-breed software and services that address all the unique needs of enterprise documents, both static and transactional.

The software solutions are available on-premises, in cloud configurations and SaaS offerings. They are scalable for very high-volume organizations that create hundreds of millions of documents every year and want to make these accessible. The software is market-proven with many of the Fortune 100 companies making them part of their mission-critical operations.

The Crawford Technologies services and support teams are second to none in the industry. They have decades of experience in the industry and have the knowledge and skills to make every accessibility program a success.

The AccessibilityNow® platform provides all of these capabilities and more. And the components are all high performance, scalable and reliable modules that are in use in the largest companies in the world, creating and delivering tens of billions of accessible documents every year.

Transactional Document Solutions

Some of the unique and powerful software components for handling transactional documents include:

Easy to use GUI design tool harnessing AI for accessibility specialists to develop document templates.
Testing tools to ensure compliance.
Cloud ready redundant database for storing templates.
High performance real-time conversions for converting documents from any format into modern accessible PDF or HTML formats that are compliant with global regulations and usable by the recipient.
Cloud ready transform manager with APIs and connectors to document repositories like IBM CMOD, FileNet and many others for real-time accessible document creation.
An easy way to incorporate alternate formats into an enterprise document accessibility strategy.

Static Document Solutions

Crawford Technologies’ unique capabilities for handling static documents include:

Easy to use GUI design tool harnessing AI for accessibility specialists to remediate documents.
Testing tools to ensure compliance.
Cloud-based web crawler that automatically scans all documents on a website, tests them for compliance and provides remediation options to fix those which are not accessible.
A cloud-based dashboard that allows organizations to track all of their document remediation tasks in real-time.
A MS-Word plug-in that makes it easy for authors to create accessible documents from inception.

Services Offerings

Achieving a successful document accessibility program requires more than just software. It necessitates a synergy of robust software solutions and the expertise and guidance of industry-leading professionals, such as:

Training programs for all accessibility needs.
A highly secure service bureau for creating and distribution of documents in alternate formats such as braille, large print, eText, Audio.
A services organization that provides remediation of PDF and Office documents in high volumes and with compliance guarantees.
A self-service portal for users to upload ad hoc documents for remediation.
An assessment and consulting services team that can help your organization plan and implement a world-class document accessibility program.

Enterprise Document Assessment

The AccessibilityNow® platform provides all of these capabilities and more. And the components are all high performance, scalable and reliable modules that are in use in the largest companies in the world, creating and delivering tens of billions of accessible documents every year.