The past couple of years have taught us many lessons, but the most important has been the ability to adapt. Technology has been our best friend, and many financial planners have been lucky enough to get on with work and life with minimal disruption. We took our client meetings online and sent SOAs electronically wherever possible.
But how many have stopped and wondered whether that PDF version of our SOA is accessible for our client? Most of us would assume that the client would tell us if they can’t read the document sent to them. But how many haven’t?
And I’m not talking about the complexity of the document, I am talking about digital accessibility. According to the World Health Organization, more than 2 billion people use assistive products such as screen readers. Vision Australia estimates that there are around 357,000 people in Australia who are blind or have low vision and require some form of assistance.
The Australian Network on Disability reports that 62% of the 533 SMEs they surveyed have not done anything in the past 12 months to make it easier for clients with a disability to access their services, including making technology accessible.
For almost half of these, there is a perception of not being asked to. “We have received no specific request”
Physical access to premises is a key focus area for most businesses, but digital accessibility still ranks relatively low. I think this is primarily due to a lack of awareness and education. You don’t know what you don’t know.
As the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative points out, it also benefits people without disabilities, for example:
- older people with changing mobility, or
- people with temporary disabilities (think broken arms and lost glasses), or
- people with a slow internet connection.
Accessibility is a much larger conversation than this, but there are ways to ensure you’re enhancing your client’s experience particularly as we move towards an aging population that will require assistive technology. In this article, I will focus on PDF document accessibility because it’s a format we all use and recognise.
What is assistive technology?
The best way to understand digital accessibility is to understand how assistive technology (AT) is used. AT helps people overcome difficulties with digital devices. The AT used will depend on the user’s needs and can help with issues such as colour blindness, mobility issues, and hearing impairments. The diagram below this paragraph shows the most popular types of assistive technology used:
I have included alt. text behind the image above to explain the contents. Without the ability to see the image, a screen reader must understand how to interpret it to its user. And this is important if you send a PDF with charts, for example. Without any idea of the image, the reader will skip over it or relate it to the user as ‘image’. If you’ve gone through all the trouble of creating a beautiful and informative chart, you want your client to know it’s there.
Making a PDF accessible
Here are some basic ways to enhance your PDF documents for a better user experience:
- Consider your colours. Ensure that the information you convey does not rely on colour alone. If you are using a lot of colour, ensure there is a strong contrast to differentiate the information in your charts and diagrams. You would be surprised how many people are colour-blind!
- Provide context for graphics. All images conveying information should have alternative text that provides the same level of understanding that a visual user would gain. “Image of people sitting in a boardroom and looking at documents” is much better than “image”. If the images are purely decorative, tag them as such, so the reader understands that they’re not relevant to the content of your document.
- Clearly label your tables. Make sure your tables have clear column and row headers. AT will read a table from left to right, row by row. Think about the layout of your information and try not to overcomplicate it.
- Use proper heading styles. Increasing the text size, changing the font colour, and calling it a heading is not enough. AT helps the user navigate through the document and genuine heading styles are a great guide.
One of the best ways to create accessible documents is through structured Word templates. A Word template with the correct style structure, image and table placeholders, and good contrast will cover a lot of the accessibility points listed above. By the time you convert your document to a PDF you will have already set your document up for success. If you’d like to enhance your templates and improve the overall user experience for your clients, contact us for a chat.
