GSA’s fiscal 2024 assessment shows that only 23% of the top-visited public websites, including document content, fully conform to Section 508 standards and only 20% of intranet sites meet all the standards. Compliance with ADA Title II standards is most likely the same or worse.

One solution to the compliance challenge is automating document accessibility remediation workflows and streamlining the process of making digital documents, communications and content accessible. By leveraging AI technology, predefined rules and compliance checks, organizations, government agencies, colleges and universities can significantly reduce manual effort when ensuring accessibility compliance and improve user experiences for people who are blind or partially sighted.

Digital document accessibility is a fundamental necessity and right. The internet provides access to crucial information, services and opportunities, so inaccessible websites and documents create barriers as significant as physical obstacles. People with disabilities rely on assistive technologies like screen readers (for individuals who are blind or partially sighted), captions and sign language interpretation (for those who are deaf or hard of hearing) and voice recognition software (for people with motor impairments) to interact with digital platforms. When content isn't designed for accessibility and isn’t remediated to be accessible, these technologies can't function effectively, blocking access to vital information and opportunities.

To mandate document and website accessibility compliance is one thing, but achieving it can be challenging. Non-existent or stripped-down budgets and limited resources hinder manual remediation efforts. The high volume of digital documents and website content that organizations, government entities and higher education organizations work with exacerbates the problem. This challenge is further compounded by the need to ensure accessibility for transactional documents like statements, invoices and personalized correspondence. These documents, often generated dynamically, require specialized processing to apply accessibility tagging and structure consistently and efficiently.

Composing documents and digital content for accessibility rather than remediating them after creation has proven to be a failed strategy and the constantly evolving landscape of accessibility guidelines and technologies adds another layer of complexity. These combined obstacles make a purely manual approach to digital accessibility unsustainable and ineffective. Therefore, automating workflows for document accessibility remediation offers a more scalable and efficient solution for organizations seeking to ensure accessibility compliance while working within budgetary limitations.

Removal of time-consuming, costly and error-prone manual processes from document accessibility remediation involves a six-step process:

The first step to automate a workflow for document accessibility remediation is to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all digital documents, encompassing both static and transactional content. For static website documents, utilize web-crawling technology to systematically identify and evaluate stored documents. For high-volume transactional documents, integrate with existing output management systems to analyze data streams and document templates. The accessibility assessment must be capable of validating a broad spectrum of document types, including PDFs, and dynamically generate accessible outputs.

Once the analysis is complete, the system should automatically audit each document file against industry standards — WCAG, PDF/UA and/or HHS — to ascertain document accessibility status. The results should be compiled into a detailed report delineating which accessibility criteria were met and which were not. For documents that fail to meet accessibility standards, the workflow should provide a range of remediation options tailored to the organization's specific requirements.

Following the assessment, prioritize documents for remediation based on criticality and volume. Implement automated tagging and output solutions that can handle both static documents and dynamic transactional data.

For efficient remediation of static documents like marketing materials, letters, books and manuals into accessible PDF, a real-time automated tagging and output solution is ideal. This process first employs AI to automatically detect tagging elements, and the pre-tagged output is then verified for compliance. The pre-tagging software can be integrated via an API into your remediation workflow. Document pre-tagging is applied during document processing. It is then verified and edited where needed to make the remediated document accessible.

For high-volume transactional documents, implement fully automated systems that can dynamically apply accessibility tagging and structure at the point of generation, ensuring consistent accessibility across personalized outputs. This includes automated tagging of elements within data streams via templates, enabling the creation of accessible PDFs or HTML directly from CCM systems.

After auto-tagging your static documents, it’s a best practice to check and verify the document for 100% accessibility. Automated accessibility tagging solutions are great time savers, but they usually remediate only 30-90% of the document. This is largely because the document's complexity necessitates tagging numerous key elements, including images that require alt-text and tables that need proper structure. For documents that need to be processed with additional tagging for accessibility, you must decide whether to complete the work internally or outsource it to a document accessibility service (DAS) bureau.

If you outsource document remediation, ensure the service bureau meets your agency's compliance standards. These standards may include compliance with HIPAA and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). This comprehensive approach ensures the highest level of security for your agency and its constituents.

You’ll also want to be sure the service bureau can complete the remediation of your documents in accessible PDF or HTML for multiple languages. Be sure they can handle high-volume projects, meet your turn-around times and deliver high-quality, accessible documents.

For in-house document remediation, choose a dedicated, purpose-built, standalone accessibility tagging and remediation solution that operates independently of Adobe Acrobat. The ideal solution will offer quick and easy tagging of PDF elements, including reading order, paragraphs, headings, lists, URLs, tables and images, and support PDF/UA, WCAG and HHS accessibility standards. Leading solutions often leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically detect required tagging elements, significantly accelerating remediation and minimizing manual errors.

For high-volume transactional data, such as statements, invoices and correspondence, specialized processing is required. Implement a workflow that can:

The final step in automating the document accessibility remediation workflow is to test and validate that the remediated documents are accessible and meet your accessibility standards: PDF/UA, WCAG and/or HHS. To mitigate risk, the validation process should be done automatically, in step with your workflow, invoked using an API before documents are shared or uploaded to a website.

Large-scale manual remediation is impractical for large organizations, government agencies and colleges and universities handling large volumes of documents. The time, effort and money required would make delivery impossible. An automated document accessibility remediation workflow offers a streamlined alternative by reducing the time, effort and cost needed to make documents accessible, ensuring both quality and compliance at scale. For high-volume transactional data, specialized automation is critical, enabling real-time accessibility transformations and ensuring compliance across vast quantities of personalized documents. Integrating these specialized workflows into existing enterprise systems is paramount for efficient and effective accessibility management.