Creating Accessible Documents Course

Last month, Françoise attended a Digital Access course run by Vision Australia on how to create accessible documents, especially PDFs.

This is because a growing number of government departments have been asking Language Professionals for accessible PDFs. PDF accessibility is needed for the visually impaired with the use of a specific software or equipment. Accessible PDFs allow users of adaptive technologies to comprehend and navigate web content. PDF tags provide a hidden structure of the content that is understood by screen readers. So accessible documents are usable and understandable by everyone regardless of their level of ability. They are also easier to find in internet searches.

In 2010, the Australian Government launched its NTS strategy, which requires all state and federal government agencies to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA conformance by December 2014.

Now some government departments have taken this to the next level and requested that their translated documents also be accessible. Hence the need for some training at Language Professionals!

What I learned is that creating an accessible document is incredibly fiddly and time consuming, and that’s just for the English version. At Language Professionals, we will routinely produce that document in another 10 or 12 languages, so our template needs to be absolutely perfect before we start the translation process.