Zen and the Art of Document Accessibility

Mark Greenfield, Web Accessibility Officer

University at Buffalo

 

In my 20+ years of working on digital accessibility, I have found that document accessibility remains an area of confusion. (See the presentation abstract.) One reason for this is that most people think of document accessibility as a subset of web accessibility when in reality they are very different requiring a different strategic approach and different skill sets. While most web developers are very comfortable looking at code and understand what needs to be done to make a web page accessible, very few people who create electronic documents understand tagging and the underlying coding of a document making remediation a daunting task. It is important to understand this dynamic when creating a strategy for document accessibility. One paradigm I plan to address is moving away from thinking about document accessibility as it relates to the public facing website and instead thinking about all of the places electronic documents are shared. On our campus, we have approximately 100,000 documents on our public facing website, but this is a fraction of the total number of electronic documents when you include the Learning Management System, campus intranets, and other file sharing platforms. Another area of emphasis will be understanding the shortcomings of accessibility checkers. Most people mistakenly believe that the checkers in Adobe Acrobat, Blackboard Ally, and Microsoft Office are thorough. Unfortunately they are not, and better tools are available. And with inspiration from the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, there will be a philosophical exploration of quality and how good is good enough. Should quality be defined as conformance to standards or by the user experience? The strategy portion will include both how to prioritize document remediation and how to determine how good is good enough, a review of tools, and options for training content authors. This presentation is not overly technical and is intended for all audiences.  

Mark Greenfield is a highly regarded, influential member of the higher education web community. He is an experienced consultant and an award winning speaker who is known for his thoughtful vision of the future of the web and technology on college campuses. He is very active in the web community serving on numerous boards and committees. Mark has worked at the University at Buffalo (UB) for over 30 years in a variety of technology positions. He currently serves as the Web Accessibility Officer providing central oversight, technical expertise and guidance, leadership and vision to support campus accessibility efforts. Mark has also served as a visiting instructor in UB’s former School of Informatics where he taught a graduate course on web accessibility. His research interests include accessibility, inclusive design, emerging technologies, social media, the Millennial Generation and their use of technology, and the impact of globalization and technology on the academy. In addition to his work at UB, Mark has consulted with dozens of colleges and universities across the world. He specializes in strategic planning, web governance and management, web accessibility, user centered design, and emerging technologies.