…or have us fix and certify it for you.
show Government of Canada case study: “David’s remediation team was the solution that ensured that vital documents for the proposed Accessible Canada Act were 100% accessible.”
“David’s remediation team was the solution that ensured that vital documents for the proposed Accessible Canada Act were 100% accessible.”
. – Max Brault, Government of Canada
When the Government of Canada needed to do the groundwork for what should soon be Canada’s national accessibility legislation, they turned to David Berman, Bill C-81 consultant for leadership on how to best make sure that all their documents about the project were accessible to all.
Here’s how Max Brault, now with Canada’s Treasury Secretariat tells it: “Time and time again we have seen great intentions fail right from the start. How often does the disability community hear a group openly state that they embrace the spirit of accessibility … and then the communication pieces distributed to members of our community that cannot read the text with their assistive technology? Sadly more often than we commonly think.
When I was brought on to serve Canada’s Deputy Minister Champion for Persons with Disabilities in 2017, one of my primary roles was to examine how we engage the community. In addition, I was to determine if there were more efficient ways to connect with them on a semi-regular basis. It was evident that we needed to ensure that all public communication pieces needed to be 100% accessible with no exceptions. It was clear that my staff did not have the knowledge or the know-how to make documents 100% accessible. It also appeared that the learning curve to gain the knowledge was time consuming. In an environment where we had tight deadlines with little room for failure, spending time in a trial and error learning pattern was not the best approach.
“The solution was David’s team. At first, we had to conquer the procurement documentation. Once that was dealt with, we began the process of getting one document after another converted to be 100% accessible. After several weeks of intense work collaborating with David’s experts, we had all the necessary documents available in accessible and convertible formats (including some especially complex diagrams and PowerPoint templates), as well as a methodology to ensure future materials would be 100% accessible.
Today the documentation that was established to procure this type of service is now available to anyone in any other department so they can mimic my original request. The original documents that were remediated are, to this day, still widely distributed within Canada’s federal government as best practice examples of what needs to be done, thus giving all documents a longer shelf life.
Over the years working with David, his team’s approach has always inspired confidence. I’m looking forward to working closely with him again later this year.”
Document and multimedia remediation
You need your documents, videos, sound files … every aspect of your website … to be accessible for everyone; whether for regulatory compliance or social responsibility.
We’re eager for you to learn how to do this all yourselves, however we also recognize that sometimes you just want someone else to fix it. That’s us!
We can help you decide what’s realistic to do in-house … and then take care of the rest for you. We’ve done it for the Government of Canada, for FEMA, for Loblaws, for some of the top ad agencies in North America… for over a hundred clients, and we can do it for you.
PDF, Word, PowerPoint, InDesign, LiveCycle Designer / AEM Forms Designer, HTML, EPUB, multimedia…
When a website, document, video, or sound file is not sufficiently accessible for persons living with disabilities (we can also help you determine, on a case-by-case basis, if that’s so and what your options are), remediation work is the next step to meet or exceed accessibility standards.
We’ll fix it … or teach you how: your choice
Many firms hire us in this way: they get coached to become fully self-sufficient in creating accessible PDFs and EPUBs (whether they start life from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, InDesign, or LiveCycle Designer / AEM Forms Designer) … while also knowing they have the safety net where we can finish remediation for them in complex cases where they can’t solve all the issues alone.
We’ll also fix related non-accessibility issues if you’d like. For example, if your static or dynamic PDF from LiveCycle Designer / AEM Forms Designer is not saveable by your audience in Adobe Reader, we can fix that too. Need accessible digital signature functionality? We’ve got your back. Need a form that changes from letter to legal size on the fly? With our experience in developing custom Office and PDF publishing solutions for our clients, we have many techniques to help you think through the most efficient way to sustainably and effectively produce your documents.
For multimedia (such as video or sound files), we provide captioning and our transcription consulting and services, as needed. We can even make SCORM accessible for your LMS.
Standards and regulations we target:
- WCAG 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 Level A, Level AA, Level AAA
- PDF/UA
- EN 301 549 (all years)
- EPUB (IDPF EPUB Accessibility Guidelines)
- ADA
- Revised Section 508 (aka 2017 Refresh)
- Ontario’s AODA
- Manitoba’s AMA
- Government of Canada’s Standard of Web Accessibility
- EU’s WAD and EAA
- Norway’s Discrimination and Accessibility Act Section 14
On-demand conversion
We provide a variety of on-demand conversions of documents (such as legal documents, leases, notices, correspondence, agreements, marketing materials, and business cards) and multimedia to a variety of accessible formats … and in languages and alphabets from around the world, including:
- Large-print editions of printed documents.
- Braille editions of documents.
- Captioning of audio files (into all popular formats, with option to manage online uploads for you).
- Audio description augmentation of video files.
- Descriptive text transcripts of video files.
- Accessible electronic documents in all major formats (including dynamic pdf, docx, pptx, xlsx, HTML, EPUB, ODF).
- InDesign to Word conversion (or vice versa!)
We are pleased to provide a guaranteed price and delivery on every project, upon inspection of your source documents. We also provide consultation on how to best structure your materials to sustainably minimize conversion costs.
How fast? Small and medium documents and multimedia are turned around within 6 working days under our standard rates. Guaranteed quicker delivery (as fast as overnight) may command a premium of 25%, 50%, or 100%, depending upon circumstances.
Certification
When remediation is complete, we rigorously test against all applicable standards and can provide an audit report and Compliance Opinion Letter, accompanied by a Compliance Certificate as well as a license to use our compliance mark, as warranted.
Our letter and certificate reference the audit date and attest to the degree of compliance achieved with regard to the standards being tested. Each document is suitable for presenting to auditors or visitors, and all other aspects of the W3C’s WCAG-EM evaluation methodology for WCAG.
We can also provide website, web-based application, mobile app, and built environment accessibility conformance audits … or train your teams on any or all of that.
Next steps
We’re standing by to cost out options for you. We’ll help you think it through, and then provide you a no-cost firm quotation and guaranteed turnaround time.
30% off your first document remediation project
You need your documents to meet or exceed the accessibility standards, whether WCAG, PDF/UA, AODA, or EN 301 549. We’re eager to teach you how, but we also know that sometimes you just need to trust someone else to get it done … including certification to every standard that applies to you and your audiences. Try our remediation service with 30% off your first order: type Coupon Code 30FIRSTTIME in our Request for Remediation Quote form. (Cannot be combined with other discounts.)