Concrete Steps towards Improving Accessibility & large organizations and service areas – Part 2

I often get asked about what organizations should be doing to improve their service
and the accessibility of their communications for people with disabilities. It
can often be difficult to figure out what tangible activities should be looked at and
where to focus one’s initial energy. I’ve written this article to try
and provide a framework for activity that relates to the Information &
Communication Technology area of ensuring accessibility.

Most businesses today conduct a large part of their communications, information and
service delivery using an “online” or electronic component. Standards exist
for accessibility in all major areas of Information & Communication
Technologies.

In Part 1 of
Concrete Steps towards Improving Accessibility & large organizations and service
areas, we explored some tangible steps that an organization can take to improve it’s web presence.

When not otherwise identified, the term “accessible” refers to a format
that meets the AA level of conformance of the WCAG2 standard W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This may seem
like a significant amount of work or a significant change in corporate culture;
however, I assure you that the amount of effort in addressing these issues in a less
systemic fashion is more costly, more effort, more trouble and leads to many possible
larger issues later on down the road.

One of the areas that is most often forgotten or receives the least amount of
attention is the documents organizations create; especially the internal documents that
are created prior to publishing.& A small amount of effort placed on the creation of structured and well designed documents will yield huge benefits when you
want to publish the material in another format or medium. Web
publishers have known this for years, especially the ones that have been stuck fixing poorly created source documents prior to publishing on the web. For more benefits of structured documents and how they can improve your ability to respond
to a multiple format request (such as braille, audio, large print, daisy etc) check out the following article: Modern
Multiple Format Production and the role of Daisy .

The Center for Assistive Technology & Environmental Access (CATEA) at Georgia Tech has created guidelines to help educators understand what they need to do in creating accessible documents within the Microsoft
Office Suite. These are a rather nice start because they break the
requirements down into categories of “must”, “should” and “may” and cover not just word documents but excel and other document formats: CATEA Accessible Document Creation Guidelines

Web Accessibility In Mind (WebAIM) have created a rather comprehensive document about creating accessible word documents WebAIM Accessible Word Techniques

Microsoft has their own reference material that covers how to create accessible documents:
Microsoft Accessible Word Guidelines

Steps For Document Accessibility

1. Document Accessibility training be provided to all THE ORGANISATION staff on
   creating accessible documents and publishing accessible documents
   1. Including showing employees how to use the Microsoft
      Accessibility Checker for the Office Suite
2. The organization explore creating standardized templates with instructions
   related to using the templates for accessible document creation
3. The organisation does spot checking and has a mechanism for ensuring the
   accessibility of the documents being created & distributed
4. All THE ORGANISATION’s publications and documents  be available in at
   least 1 fully accessible format 
   1. Including communications, event announcements, papers and any material that
      is provided to customers by employees or through the organization by other
      third-parties. in printed form
5. A mechanism be created for requesting material in alternate
   format  and receiving the material in a timely fashion
   1.  daisy type 4
   2. braille
   3. large print
   4. e-text
   5. Tagged & structured PDF
6. A communication be created
   explaining how customers and employees can request materials in alternative formats,
   a place on the organization’s website be created to distribute this information
   and New customers be provided with information  on how to request material in
   alternative formats
7. A triage process  should be put in place to ensure that when a
   document is found to be inaccessible, it is fixed and the sources of inaccessible
   documents are educated, provided with awareness on accessible document creation
8. All major documents that are produced by the organization’s
   systems such as financial reports, account statements or summaries of financial
   transactions  be produced in a WCAG2 AA compliant format