Universal accessibility more than inclusion
Many further questions arise regarding the topic of accessibility and digitization. At the beginning of the year, the PDF Association published an interesting perspective on this on pdfa.org. It focused on accessible communication. This is an important topic, also with regard to website design and document formats, because public authorities and some organizations are required by EU directives to make their communication accessible. This means they must provide all content (paper and electronic documents, websites, and apps) in a universally accessible and understandable way.
Accessible communication is a complex issue. Content must be created and provided as intelligently as possible, including clear language, correct syntax, and multilingual offerings.
Accessibility also means multi-channel capability
Multi-channel or omnichannel communication means that the content of websites and documents must be accessible and readable across different media. One example is a document that can be read and signed on a smartphone, sent by mail, and read aloud by a screen reader so it is accessible to visually impaired users. This is what universal accessibility means in practice. Documents should be tagged and enriched with structural information, and they should be designed for multi-channel use and responsive presentation.
However, in the context of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and other current technologies, real digital transformation also means collecting and using actionable data. The ultimate goal is not only the availability of the document itself, but also of the data it contains. This has long been a key issue, especially in marketing and sales, where increasingly detailed information is required for targeted, automated campaigns.
This is an important aspect, showing that all published documents should include meaningful data.
The key point is that it is not enough to make archived documents merely readable. Their data should be enhanced accordingly. Many companies shy away from the effort of indexing existing documents afterward. Yet this data is precisely what creates value, because only with high-quality data can digital technologies reach their full potential.
In the article by Carsten Luedtge, the PDF Association uses Google as an example:
The company uses its new Dataset Search engine to bundle the countless providers of scientific datasets on the web to make research easier for scientists, journalists and students. Behind it lies the phenomenon of the "semantic web." It's about having available not only the text itself but the content as data that can be automatically correlated. (...) Only then is ongoing information research over multiple levels possible. Instead of manually searching through a document for a specific piece of information, the web readily provides the answer. These are not just simple search results but complex results that can only be generated by linking different data.
The article concludes that topics such as the semantic web and accessible communication are moving increasingly into focus. For example, the University of Hildesheim (near Hanover, Germany) now offers courses in accessible communication. Companies should generally rethink how they create documents.
The new approach: Documents are data sources that provide companies with the raw material to tap into new markets. The needed technologies are available. In the meantime there are enough applications and IT solutions that support intelligent document production.