Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Developing machine-readable content (self.Blind)
submitted by ApostateX
Hello,
A client of my company has recently requested that we make the documents we produce for them machine-readable for visually impaired and blind clients of theirs. We produce financial reports for mutual funds, separately managed accounts and other kinds of financial data, so there are lots of various types of charts and tabular content..
The client requested we follow ADA standards, but we have not been able to identify what those standards are. Unlike commentary or standard text, we know there are problems translating content to audio for things like charts, based on how they're embedded in the file. We also know there are issues with color that affect readability.
I called the Perkins School for the Blind to get some information from them and am waiting to hear back. Does anyone on this site know of any organizational standards providing documentation explaining how to facilitate machine reader accuracy? We'd like to be able to develop to a standard, if possible, rather than guessing at this ourselves.
Thank you for any information you can share.
A client of my company has recently requested that we make the documents we produce for them machine-readable for visually impaired and blind clients of theirs. We produce financial reports for mutual funds, separately managed accounts and other kinds of financial data, so there are lots of various types of charts and tabular content..
The client requested we follow ADA standards, but we have not been able to identify what those standards are. Unlike commentary or standard text, we know there are problems translating content to audio for things like charts, based on how they're embedded in the file. We also know there are issues with color that affect readability.
I called the Perkins School for the Blind to get some information from them and am waiting to hear back. Does anyone on this site know of any organizational standards providing documentation explaining how to facilitate machine reader accuracy? We'd like to be able to develop to a standard, if possible, rather than guessing at this ourselves.
Thank you for any information you can share.
Amonwilde 2 points 2y ago
If you make your reports web-ready, you could use WCAG: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ Adobe has some resourecs on this, though they're not amazing: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/create-verify-pdf-accessibility.html
Tables can be made screen reader accessible, and should be. Charts and visualizations are harder, a few ways you can go about it are to make the underlaying data available in other formats, and to provide significant descriptions of the charts and their purpose in the document as alternate text. There are some technologies in the works to sonify charts and visualizations but nothing really ready for prime time, as far as I can tell. You'll have to make sure your charts, etc. meet standards for contrast as well.
Tables can be made screen reader accessible, and should be. Charts and visualizations are harder, a few ways you can go about it are to make the underlaying data available in other formats, and to provide significant descriptions of the charts and their purpose in the document as alternate text. There are some technologies in the works to sonify charts and visualizations but nothing really ready for prime time, as far as I can tell. You'll have to make sure your charts, etc. meet standards for contrast as well.
FantasticGlove 1 points 2y ago
You can also use Microsoft Excel to make tables accessible if you clearly label the colomns and if you organize the info. Excel is the most accessible program for tables and its incredible for stats and accounting. I know this because I'm taking a business analysis course using excel class.
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