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New PDF Accessibility Remediation Service

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By Jay Cooper
Dec 5, 2018 11:39:50 PM

You’ve been there before: you’re on a web page, you click a link and up pops a PDF.  Of course, it’s formatted differently than that web page you were just on. Now you’re viewing a hodge-podge of font sizes and styles, headings, indents and who knows what else from what likely started as a Microsoft Word document.  

Many schools use PDFs as standard operating procedure on their website. Problem is when you link a PDF to your website, there’s a good chance it’s not only potentially tough to read but not ADA-compliant either.

Enter SchoolNow’s PDF Accessibility Compliance Service.

In a move to extend its website accessibility services SchoolNow is now offering PDF Accessibility Compliance Service to remediate, report and provide an ongoing review of any and all PDFs linked to school websites.

Get a quote for PDF accessibility service


School districts and private schools are under increased pressure to make their websites fully accessible to people with disabilities. Concerned parents, staff, school boards, disability advocacy groups, and formal complaints from the Office for Civil Rights are putting a hot spotlight on the need to eliminate barriers on school websites.

These are barriers that close to 20 percent of the U.S. population encounter. Obstacles that confront not just the sight and hearing impaired, but the millions of Americans with myriad physical and learning disabilities.

It’s about time

Some schools have dozens or hundreds of PDFs linked to their website. For sake of saving time or creating a new web page for certain content, school website content managers often opt to merely create a PDF for content such as:

  • Board documents (meeting agendas, minutes, policies)

  • Forms (staff, parental, etc.)

  • Homework assignments

  • Announcements/events

  • General info (report cards, materials lists, schedules, etc.)

“Many customers have asked for this service as making sure PDFs are ADA compliant can be a time-consuming and challenging task,” said Jason Morgan, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder. Morgan oversees a staff of certified digital specialists responsible for remediating SchoolNow customer websites.

“Combing through all the PDFs stored on a school website or linked to a school website is a daunting task, and one that most school administrators can’t or don’t want to tackle on their own,” said Morgan.

“We take the responsibility off their hands by fixing and keeping the PDFs on their website ADA compliant and accessible to those with disabilities, so they can focus on education.”

A PDF website dashboard

SchoolNow, which founded the Website Accessibility Center in 2017, developed the PDF Accessibility Compliance Service to ensure the PDFs shared school websites meet the WCAG 2.1 Level II website accessibility standard. The service spans initial assessment and remediation, to ongoing fixes, to new PDFs being added to the website.

SchoolNow developers have created a mini-dashboard built into the SchoolNow CMS dashboard so a school’s website administrator can receive up-to-date reports of all PDF accessibility issues. Ongoing review and remediation is conducted by one of SchoolNow’s certified digital specialists.

In addition, the company, which offers a comprehensive list of website services for schools, provides an optional, premium ‘on-the-fly’ remediation upgrade where all PDFs are fixed when added to the site.

“PDFs are not going away anytime soon,” said Morgan, who’s been producing websites for schools for over 20 years. “So schools need to accommodate them as best they can and take the steps necessary to make sure they’re accessible.”


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Topics: Website accessibility Campus Suite news School Districts

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About the author

Marketing director and content strategist for SchoolNow, Jay’s a former school public relations specialist who’s helped businesses, schools and colleges use the power of communications to improve their image, generate support, and optimize relationships. Reach him at jay@schoolnow.com.