Item 3: Savvy Tech PDF Accessibility Presentation — original pdf

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Accessible Documents, Accessible City AIMRobotics + City of Austin Mayor’s Committee Katherine Chen, AIMRobotics Jaxsen Day, Digital Disability Research, UT Austin Benjamin Chen, AIMRobotics Opening Remark The City of Austin website https://www.austintexas.gov/ serves as a central hub for accessing city services, public records, and government information. Users can complete tasks like paying bills, applying for permits, reporting issues, and accessing property or development data. It also provides updates on city programs, departments, and community resources, along with tools and information for residents, businesses, and visitors. It is very essential to make it accessible for people with disability which ~2–3% of the population is blind or has low vision to get the same amount of information. That is 20K-30K Austinian. Today we are going to focusing on public PDF files’ accessibility which can be found on https://www.austintexas.gov/ An Austin boutique builder and his vision-impaired daughter story Our review of one of City’s PDF Forms ● Link to the PDF form: Amnesty Certificate of Occupancy Application ❏ Wrong Reading order - confusing ❏ No title for the file - confusion when multiple files are opened, they don't know which one is for which ❏ Table content: redundant reading, Reduces comprehension and increase confusion Impact: confusing and can not fill in the required data Our Review of the converted accessible html file ● Link to Full accessible format: https://www.aimrobotics.us/product-demo ❏ The form is tagged very well, and everything is working as expected. ❏ Provides a fully accessible experience when used with a compatible screen reader and browser combination. Impact: Was able to understand the form and fill in the data without any issue. What Is an Accessible PDF? Accessibility ≠ Just Opening a File ● It’s about how content is structured and navigated What Accessible PDFs Enable ● Navigate by headings and sections ● Follow content in the correct order ● Understand images and tables ● Complete forms independently Common Failure Points ● Scanned/image-only documents ● Incorrect reading order ● Missing tags ● Tables without structure Non-accessible PDF Example Blind user doesn’t know message behind image Blind user cannot navigate to link Blind user cannot understand table clelarly One option: Use HTML (web pages) instead of PDFs ● Built for accessibility from the start ● Content is easier to navigate and read ● Works better with screen readers ● Adapts to different devices and zoom levels Why PDFs are harder ● Designed for fixed layout (like a printed page) ● Accessibility has to be added manually ● Easy to get wrong at scale Risks Why this problem still exists ● Most documents weren’t created with accessibility in mind ● ● ● Large volume of legacy PDFs Accessibility is often misunderstood as “just readable” Fixing documents manually is slow and resource-intensive 5-10 min per page for manual remediation $5-12 per PDF file (depending on complexity) a. b. Why urgency is increasing ● ● ● ● Digital accessibility is now being actively enforced 1,200+ digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2024 Over 4,000 ADA-related accessibility cases annually Public entities are not exempt What lawsuits are about ● ● ● Inaccessible websites and documents Users unable to navigate or access services Denial of equal access → considered discrimination Call for Action 1. Have a plan to address them timely a. Inventory all publicly available PDFs b. Run accessibility checks to identify issues c. Prioritize—full remediation isn’t feasible at once d. Use a tiered approach based on traffic e. Convert high-priority files to accessible formats first f. Train staff on creating accessible PDFs 2. Manual PDF remediation proved costly and difficult to scale, especially for large document backlogs. We adopted an AI-based approach that converts PDFs to HTML to improve efficiency and reduce cost. Let us make Austin an ALL-inclusive city Accessible Usable Supportive Transparent Inclusive Navigable All-inclusive city = welcoming, equitable, accessible to all Open Discussion