Guest Column: Accessibility: A Vehicle For Growth And Change In ECM

By Peter Ganza, director, product marketing at Xenos, an Actuate Company

Accessibility should be top of mind when considering the list of current and emerging concerns in enterprise content management (ECM). High-volume transactional output environments (HVTO) in particular are challenged more than ever to provide accessible content to all users.

PDF files are still the primary mechanism to store transactional information in ECM systems. Yet unfortunately, they are almost always inaccessible to a key subset of users: people with visual impairments using screen readers.

The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or Section 508 legislation clearly defines a requirement to provide accessible documents or an alternate format. The growing challenge for ECM is in finding the balance between accessible and alternative formats, without compromising service levels and cost structures.

Typically, alternate formats are managed by third-party outsourcers, commonly referred to as document accessibility services. These services take standard statements in PDF format and convert them to an alternate format that is accessible for users with visual impairments.