ACCESSIBILITY STATUS OF STATE OF KANSAS WEBSITES

AMP  Accessibility Management Platform  Enterprise web accessibility assessment tool  Available to all agencies  Performs automated testing (and facilitates manual testing)  Acquired in 2011, rolled out over 2011– 2012

AMP Assessment

Assessment Sample  Matches last year’s for direct comparison  63 agency home page domains, as represented in the Agency Contact Listing page of the Communication Directory on the Department of Administration website (with corrections and a few additions)  Spidered each site up to 250 pages  Automated testing

Pages  11,031 pages scanned  11,084 last year  8,041 pages had one or more violations (72.9%)  Down from 9,292 pages (83.8%) last year  ~11% reduction in pages with violations

Numbers of Violations Δ High Severity Violations 55,210(48%) 34,470(46%) ↓ 38% Medium Severity Violations 11,533(10%) 9,994(13%) ↓ 13% Low Severity Violations 48,248(42%) 29,758(40%) ↓ 38% Total Violations 114,991 74,222 ↓ 35%

Agencies and Violations  Since last year, 70% of agencies have reduced their number of violations.  Overall and average numbers of violations dropped 35%, due to an overall elimination of almost 41,000 violations.

AMP For more information about AMP:

KPI  AMP usage  Web content accessibility

PDF ACCESSIBILITY

PDF  Portable Document Format  Multiplatform standard for electronic document exchange

Broadly Adopted  Reliable, looks the same everywhere (Windows, Mac, Linux, tablet, phone, printer, etc.)  Difficult to alter but may be secured, stamped, annotated, redacted, digitally signed and much more  Works offline  PDF/A files suitable for permanent archival  Sturdy, powerful and flexible; essentially “electronic paper”  Easy to produce

Challenges  As visual fidelity was the sole original intent of PDF, it has no intrinsic semantics.  Anyone can and does make PDF documents and forms, so content production is often beyond web content managers’ control  Appearance is unmanaged (no CSS or equivalent)  No visibility: even 1,000 page PDF files are “managed” by content management systems as single objects  While web pages can easily be fixed or tweaked, changing PDF files usually means returning to the source

Accessibility Requirements  ITEC Policy 1210, Section 508, and WCAG all apply regardless of the technology, so PDF documents on state websites must be accessible just like HTML.  In order for a PDF document to be accessible, it must satisfy many of the same functional requirements as a traditional HTML web page (or any other form of ICT), such as:  Alternative text for images  Identification of document structure (headings)  Programmatically identifiable table relationships  Programmatically identifiable labels for form controls  Adaptability to multiple modalities  Etc.

Scope  Prevalence of PDF documents on state websites is significant—comparable to HTML!  One rough estimate (based on a small sample) suggests about half of the PDFs on state websites are untagged, and about 90% are non-compliant.

Authoring Accessible PDF  PDF accessibility must be addressed both in PDF itself and, in many cases, in the format of the originating document from which the PDF is created (e.g., Word).  Unlike HTML, accessible development and remediation of PDF requires additional software tools that are not freely available.

NetCentric CommonLook  NetCentric, with its CommonLook line of products and services, seems to be only major player in PDF accessibility space.  CommonLook Trial  23 people on evaluation team, from 12 agencies/organizations  Evaluated CommonLook Office and CommonLook PDF  60-day trial  7 webinar meetings with NetCentric personnel

Trial Outcome  Overall sentiment was positive  Consensus that acquisition for regular use would be desirable  All agreed any purchase should be done collectively for volume discount

Request  Would like agencies to identify—without commitment—potential users of each product:  CommonLook Office, for non-technical content creators using Microsoft Office (specifically, Word and PowerPoint)  CommonLook PDF, for more technical users who need to tag existing PDFs using Adobe Acrobat Professional (How many Acrobat licenses?)  Estimated numbers of users of each will determine available pricing

PDF Accessibility For additional PDF accessibility information:

Contact For questions, comments, etc., please contact: Cole Robison Director of IT Accessibility Office of Information Technology Services State of Kansas (785)