Audit Commission
Communicating to all
Part of the requirement for Audit Commission publishing was the need to incorporate high levels of accessibility for content. The objective was to ensure that published content recognised the needs of those with disabilities in print and digital formats. Integrating accessibility into the production templates was key to reducing the time required to achieve this. To deliver the highest standards Adobe Acrobat was then used to address specific issues. Documents needed a review to ensure that visual elements were clearly explained by screen readers for users with impaired vision.
The document has been prepared with a tagged file structured to comply with high standards of digital accessibility. Activate View >> Read out Loud, to hear the content of the document spoken. This allows the visually impaired access to this document and the tag structure ensures that the content can be repurposed for alternative presentation use via XML.
Designing and structuring a PDF for online publication is not simply a case of making text searchable and accessible to screen readers. Screen readers can only follow basic logic, so consideration of the logical read order is required. It is also important to recognise that verbally explaining something that cannot be seen can require a very different approach. Pages 9 and 10 above show examples where human intervention is required. The image and its caption on page 9 need to be explained and the pull-quote above ignored as it is repeated in the main copy. On page 10 the table works for visual presentation but the screen reading alternative must provide a narrative that can be followed without any visual aids. Examples of these pages can be made available on request.
