Hey @googleaccess, this is really poor form. Surely one of your "lessons learned" was to make your documents as accessible as possible? A "view-only" PDF is not acceptable in 2020 from a team attempting to teach others about accessibility. @aardrian 1/11 https://twitter.com/googleaccess/status/1275920228627517440
As @aardrian showed, it is demonstrably false to say that your PDF "cannot be tagged at this time". In #MicrosoftWord or #LibreOffice your team could produce a tagged PDF version in less time than you will spend responding to this Twitter thread. 2/11 https://twitter.com/aardrian/status/1275952490916261889
Why are you creating two versions of your report to begin with? The best practice is to create a single file accessible to all, instead of creating a text-only version and a graphics-intensive version. This was a debate that was resolved in the 1990s. 3/11 https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/accessibility/disability-support-lessons-learned/
Issue 1: I can't download or cut and paste your report because you disabled those features. This is discouraged for accessibility. Give users the freedom to manipulate your document however they need, rather than assuming everyone's needs can be met within your restrictions. 5/11
Issue 2: Your choice of medium blue ( #4285F4) to indicate some links and emphasized text does not meet minimum colour contrast guidelines of the #WCAG. This is a poor colour choice for accessible content. 6/11
Issue 3: Your use of asterisks as footnote markers is not supported by Google Docs in any special way: users must manually search your file to find footnotes. In a PDF file, you can use <Reference> and <Note> tags, but those don't exist in Google Docs. 7/11
Issue 4: In the "view-only" PDF, many colour pairs do not meet WCAG guidelines. For example, 3 of 5 colour pairs on slide 5 graph. Slide 14 will be almost unreadable when presented in light conditions of many typical office spaces. 8/11
https://www.blog.google/documents/81/Lessons_learned_Building_an_accessible_support_team.pdf
Your PDF problems stem from not thinking about accessibility at the start of your process. If you intend to publish as PDF, then design so you can produce one. Your team should be thinking about how you intend to distribute documents when you first begin to discuss them. 9/11
One real issue underlying all this is that Google products don't export accessible PDFs. More and more Google users are creating these "view-only" PDFs. This is your fault. Google is directly responsible for the current proliferation of inaccessible PDF content on the web. 10/11
You say "Google is committed to making accessibility a core consideration from the earliest stages of product design through release". #MicrosoftWord and #LibreOffice both produce accessible PDFs. But not Google Docs. If you really want to help us, fix your software please. 11/11
You can follow @pkiff.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: