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PREP New Release Features: Import PowerPoint, Word, and PDF Files Export Accessible PDF, HTML or DOCX Files

Import PowerPoint, Word, and PDF Files Export Accessible PDF, HTML or DOCX Files
In this new release of March 2021, we have greatly enhanced PREP’s capabilities in simplifying complex document remediation. This includes time-consuming aspects of document remediation such as making scanned PDFs accessible, tagging complex tables, table of contents (ToCs), lists, or nested lists, and adding alternative text for images. PREP can now handle these in just a few clicks – easily, and efficiently.
Another innovative feature that has been built into PREP (PDF Remediation Platform) is inter-format conversion support. In addition to offering flexibility to the user, this feature enables faster and easier document remediation and validation.
PREP generates Web Accessibility, PDF/UA compliant documents in multiple formats through a single Cloud-based interface.

PREP now supports inter-format conversion:

Import Export
PowerPoint (Pptx) Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
Word Document (Docx) Word Document (Docx)
PDF (Portable Format Document) PDF (Portable Format Document)
What PREP offers is the ability to make in-house remediation easy, and scalable through an intuitive interface that automates remediation. Our goal was to make the work of accessibility experts faster and achieve document remediation at a fraction of the cost and time. PREP does this by allowing accessibility professionals or any user to move past the cumbersome steps involved in creating accessible digital documents.

PREP: Behind the Scenes

PREP allows users to easily import Powerpoint (PPTX), Word Document (Docx), or PDF documents. The tool’s sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology performs a preliminary tag detection and labels the content with auto-generated hierarchy-based tag structure. Thus, establishing a logical sequence, making it easy for screen reader users, or those using assistive technology devices to more easily navigate through the documents.
PREP allows users to assign tags, annotate, provide alternative text (alt text) for images, and make any corrections as required. As a part of the workflow, users can check for compliance against Section 508, WCAG 2.0, PDF U/A, & ADA with PREP’s built-in accessibility checker.
Finally, users can export the file as an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), Word Document (Doc) or PDF (Portable Format Document).
What we’re consistently demonstrating with enhancing PREP’s inbuilt, intelligent features is that document accessibility doesn’t have to come at a huge cost. Continual Engine offers customized, and affordable options for all types of organizations, and accessibility professionals. Contact us to learn more about how PREP can make a difference to your document remediation processes.
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What is PDF Remediation?

pdf remediation
How does the experience of reading a PDF work for someone who is using a screen reader? You may assume, “If screen readers can read a screen, they should be able to read PDFs, so we don’t need to do anything else to make PDFs accessible.” However, as wonderful as screen readers are, they need some guidance in parsing a PDF that has various elements.

What is PDF Remediation?

A PDF remediation is the process of making a PDF accessible for people who use assistive technology. If you use a screen reader, you will notice that it reads a screen from left to right and one element after another. You will hear it reading the screen as it navigates a document, web page, or PDF that you ask it to read.

For a screen reader to read effectively, you need to tell it where to go next once it’s done reading the current element. Unlike HTML or XML, PDFs do not have tags for screen readers to rely on. You may have some ways of marking up text in a PDF, such as using headings, page breaks, or paragraphs, but they’re not always 100% accurate. Reliable remediation allows us to bake extra (or missing) guidance into a PDF to enable a screen reader to parse or read the document to match the document creator’s intention. It’s a way to add metadata (tags) into a document that tells screen readers what the distinct elements are and their reading order. For example, which element is a table versus which one is a list or image.

Remediation is also essential when a completely accessible document is converted from Word or Google Docs to PDF. Conversion can strip away some accessibility features.

Why is PDF Remediation Important?

Document remediation is important to make digital content easier to grasp for people with disabilities or someone who uses assistive technology like screen readers, speech-recognition software, alternative input devices, screen magnifiers, text-to-speech software, and Braille displays. It is also helpful for people with cognitive disorders or impairments related to the brain as well.

One of the significant benefits of PDF remediation is that it allows the document to look the same in print as it is online. Be it on Windows, Mac, or a mobile device; a document is only accessible when even assistive technologies can relay the information accurately to users. Another major advantage is that with the right tags, online documents can enhance their SEO and make them more useful. PDF Accessibility is crucial to ensure that digital content is inclusive and usable by all individuals, regardless of their abilities or disabilities.

For example, look at this infographic. Whether this is an image or a page in a PDF, it is clear that a screen reader will have trouble reading all the elements in the proper order. A screen reader is likely to read the blue headings together as, “How a device locates itself, how location data is collected” Instead, you may want it to read the line “Mobile devices contain hardware” after it reads the first heading in blue, “How a device locates itself.” This is only possible via PDF remediation.

What is the Process of Remediating a PDF?

Here are the basic steps for document remediation:

  1. Begin the remediation process in an original source file. If you do not have one, convert the PDF into a word document.
  2. Tag the digital elements like the tables, alt text, images, links, headings, lists, and the reading order of the PDF. Tagged PDFs help the supporting technologies read a document successfully.
  3. You can tag documents with the help of Adobe Acrobat Pro in the tag panel, where every page is validated with the final PDF document checklist.
  4. If an item is not in compliance, it is noted in the remediation report.
  5. Validate the pages once again and save a copy of the document.

Which Formats and PDF Documents Can You Make Accessible?

Types of documents that are most commonly remediated are:

  •  PDF Documents
  • Microsoft Documents like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Publisher

Documents in the original format are considered to undergo the most accurate remediation, while scanned documents are viewed as images and cannot be made accessible. However, object recognition tools can recognize text in images and add a tagging structure but typically, scanned documents need to be recreated from the beginning.

Can You Automate the Document Remediation Process?

 You can automate document remediation with the help of Adobe’s “Make Accessible” or “Autotag Document” tools in Acrobat Pro. These help identify and correct accessibility problems in very simple documents without too many elements.

These tools only work well for documents with fewer elements. And in most cases, they are not the best option, as in most cases, you cannot automate the remediation process for documents carrying too many elements like images, tables, lists, links, basic titles, and texts. For that, there are two other solutions:

  • Invest in PDF Remediation Software
  • Leverage a PDF Remediation Service

How Does PREP's Remediation Software Work?

Someone using assistive technology expects the same information from a PDF as the other users receive. PDF accessibility should be on the top of your mind for this to happen. To make a PDF with fewer elements accessible, you can use automated tools, but if you are searching for a complete and permanent solution, PREP’s (PDF and Document Remediation Platform) AI-enabled tool is your answer.

Let our experts handle the tedious tasks for you. Your document remediation process has just gotten faster, more straightforward, and customizable with our automated AI-driven PDF remediation service. Trusted by leading organizations across industries, with a simple 3-step process, PREP remediates documents with speed and simplicity.

Step 1: Upload the document, and within seconds it gets auto-tagged in our software.

Step 2: Modify the tags by simply clicking on the tag and then choosing the correct tag from the dropdown.

Step 3: Save the document and export the file.

Book a Free Trial Now!
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PREP automates the creation of Accessible PDF Forms

PREP automates the creation of Accessible PDF Forms

PREP automates the creation of Accessible PDF Forms

The advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-driven PDF Remediation Platform, PREP has introduced its latest capabilities for easy remediation of fillable Form fields.
People with disabilities access forms with the help of text-to-voice softwares, screen readers, and other assistive technologies. This makes accessibility of forms and fillable fields critical, whether it is to create interactive and accessible fields to help users navigate without barriers, or remediating existing forms so they are fully accessible and available to everyone.
PREP has taken an intuitive and human-centered approach to the remediation of forms, which means through using PREP individuals, institutions, and businesses can now create accessible PDF forms as part of their regular workflow in a matter of minutes.
Scanned PDFs are created when a printed document is scanned and digitized into an electronic format, producing a graphical representation of the document. These PDF files present a significant accessibility barrier for users of assistive technologies, as the page content appears as an inaccessible graphic and does not represent the text or numerical characters as intended. Assistive technologies such as screen readers cannot parse or read the document thereby limiting access to people with disabilities.

How does PREP help you with Accessible PDF Forms?

PREP auto-detects and marks-up form elements that can be manually modified to interactive form fields.
A user can effortlessly customize forms by adding tooltips, modifying field descriptions, and fixing or assigning a logical reading order on fillable forms ensuring proper structure that allows for clarity for users of assistive technologies.

Steps in Making Forms Accessible using PREP

  1. PREP automatically detects the form elements – form fields and labels.
  2. To tag the particular form field, the user simply needs to associate the form field to the respective label.
  3. Easily fix descriptions on text fields by choosing from the options bar.
  4. Add/Edit tooltip to provide any extra information about a form field.
  5. A simple select, drag, and drop in the tag tree structure to associate form field with its respective label. (shown in the video above).

What Form Elements does PREP support?

PREP supports the following form elements:

1. Text fields

2. Checkboxes

3. Radio buttons

4. List boxes

5. Dropdowns

6. Date/time fields

7. Submit buttons

8. Signature boxes

How Does PREP Ensure PDF Forms are Accessible?

PREP’s in-built versatile accessibility checker systematically detects and prompts users about inaccessible form fields, which can then be easily corrected.
PREP-Forms-CTA
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Automate Scanned PDF Remediation using PREP, AI-Based PDF Remediation Platform

Automate Scanned PDF Remediation using PREP, AI-Based PDF Remediation Platform
Document remediation for accessibility is more efficient when working with digitally generated documents. However, this is not always the available format which makes working with printed and scanned documents significantly complex, and most often a cumbersome process for accessibility professionals, and educational institutions dealing with a high volume of scanned documents.
PREP, a revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) -driven PDF Remediation Platform can now easily and efficiently remediate complex scanned PDF documents. As a cloud-based platform, PREP makes document remediation simple and intuitive through the use of cutting-edge AI enabling easy collaboration and provides a built-in accessibility checker to ensure compliance against Section 508, WCAG 2.0, PDF U/A, & ADA.

What are Scanned PDFs?

Scanned PDFs are created when a printed document is scanned and digitized into an electronic format, producing a graphical representation of the document. These PDF files present a significant accessibility barrier for users of assistive technologies, as the page content appears as an inaccessible graphic and does not represent the text or numerical characters as intended. Assistive technologies such as screen readers cannot parse or read the document thereby limiting access to people with disabilities.

How Does PREP Handle Scanned PDFs?

As scanned PDFs are inherently inaccessible, processing the document through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technique ensures that the content of the PDF is converted into an accessible format. This enables PDF remediation tools, such as PREP, to tag and produce a logical reading order which adheres to the industry set accessibility guidelines.
Previously users had to subscribe to a separate OCR software, or rely on Adobe’s in-built OCR, making it a tedious process to remediate scanned PDFs. Using advanced algorithms PREP’s intuitive workflow performs OCR on the scanned PDF in a matter of a few seconds, analyzes the document, and automatically assigns tag tree structure, establishing a logical reading order, ready to be reviewed and edited as deemed by the user.
PREP is designed to specifically address complex PDF remediation tasks through a highly intelligent user interface (UI) and automate tagging of complex elements such as tables, lists, nested tables, and nested lists, allowing users to remediate a high volume of documents in a short span of time.
Accessibility professionals, individuals, organizations, and educational institutions can significantly reduce time and costs related to remediating scanned PDFs. Through three simple steps, PREP makes the process of PDF remediation intuitive, cost-effective, and scalable. In addition, the in-built PDF accessibility checker inspects and highlights any areas for repair on the PDF file before export.
To request for a free trial of PREP, or to learn about our affordable and scalable PDF accessibility services, write to us at contact@continualengine.com or visit https://prep.continualengine.com/.
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How to Make a PDF Accessible?

How to Make a PDF Accessible?
PDF or the portable document format is one of the most preferred formats for digital content publishing and distribution. PDF is an open standard format that allows for faithful representation of content across multiple platforms and devices strictly maintaining document structure and integrity.
Unfortunately, not all PDFs are created with accessibility in mind.

What is an Accessible PDF?

An accessible PDF is one where each page element in a PDF document is tagged appropriately with PDF tags (similar to HTML tags) that helps identify the content type, format, and establishes a logical reading order for assistive technologies to follow, making the PDF fully accessible.
With the increasing number of visually impaired users or persons with other disabilities around the world, there is a responsibility to make all digital content accessible.
With the increasing number of visually impaired users or persons with other disabilities around the world, there is a responsibility to make all digital content accessible.
With regards to PDF accessibility, by meeting comprehensive standards such as WCAG 2.0, PDF/UA and Section 508 allows for creating accessible PDF documents to be read by screen readers like JAWS or NVDA, text-to-speech tools, screen magnification and other assistive technologies.
A fully accessible PDF makes it easy for people with disabilities to access and navigate the document interpreting and understanding the content with the aid of assistive technology.

What are the Characteristics of an Accessible PDF?

While it’s important to make your PDFs accessible, you need to understand the main characteristics that can make any document accessible to everyone.

Let’s look at the ten essential characteristics of an accessible PDF:

  1. Searchable Text
    Keeping the content in your documents as a scanned image of texts or having image-only texts in your documents reduces its accessibility, leaving an inaccessible PDF that’s difficult to read or extract words for assistive technologies. To keep PDF accessibility in your mind, make sure to convert your scanned images of text into searchable text. You can do this by using the optical character recognition (OCR) feature.
  2. Simple Fonts That Can be Extracted to Text
    If software cannot read the Unicode characters of any font because of the lack of information, it won’t be able to recognize the text and ultimately fail to read it to the user. Hence, to keep PDF accessibility in mind, you must have simple fonts with readable Unicode characters. Moreover, people using a screen reader or the read-aloud feature available in the PDF can successfully access content since Acrobat can extract characters from Unicode text.
  3. Alt Text Descriptions for Images
    Alt text descriptions are text alternatives that describe the content of images, charts, or other visuals in a PDF document. These descriptions allow screen readers to read aloud the contents of a visual element, making them easier to understand and easier for people with impaired vision to access. Additionally, alt texts for images provide keyword-rich context around the visuals so that search engines can index and rank them accordingly. This makes it easier for users who are searching online to find relevant information quickly and accurately.
  4. Proper Document Structure Tags and Reading Order
    Document structure tags mark up a PDF document, providing context to each part of the document and enabling screen readers to interpret the content accurately. This allows those who rely on assistive technology to access PDFs better, as they can easily navigate through the document in a logical order.

    Similarly, the reading order is another key element of making a PDF accessible. It enables assistive technologies such as screen readers to present the document’s content logically and coherently. When a PDF document has a proper reading order, the content is structured in a way that follows a logical flow, allowing users to navigate the document predictably.

  5. Interactive Form Fields
    Interactive form fields allow users who rely on assistive technology, such as screen readers or voice recognition software, to navigate through a document more easily by providing an interactive interface for completing forms. This type of feature makes form fields more interactive, allowing people with disabilities to feed information to the form fields more accurately.
  6. Specified Document Language
    Document language can help improve text-to-speech functions by allowing them to pronounce words correctly based on their language. Further, it also helps users who use screen readers switch to their preferred language for accessibility.
  7. Navigational Aids
    Navigational aids provide an invaluable service by enabling people to find their way quickly and easily through the content of a PDF document. They come in many forms, such as bookmarks, links, headings, and lists.

    Bookmarks provide quick navigation between sections within a document, while links take users directly from one page to another or even different documents. Headings help readers understand the structure of a document and make it easier to scan for relevant information, while lists allow users to skim through the contents of long documents quickly. Using these navigational tools together ensures that your PDFs are both readable and accessible to all audiences.

  8. Security That Does Not Interrupt PDF Accessibility
    You can disable the option to edit text, add comments, print, extract, or copy anything in the PDF document. But this makes a PDF inaccessible to a screen reader. Ensure that the security settings in your Acrobat are not set to interrupt the screen reader’s ability to change text into speech.
  9. Accurate Color Contrast
    Having a proper color contrast is essential when making a PDF accessible. Poorly contrasted colors can make it difficult for those with visual impairments to read the information contained in a PDF. To increase accessibility, the visibility of text within a PDF must be improved by considering both the background and foreground colors.

    A balance between light and dark colors is important when selecting contrasting colors for a PDF document. It is recommended that light text should be placed against dark backgrounds, and vice-versa.

  10. Audio and Video Controls
    Lastly, PDF accessibility can only be achieved when you have given your users the ability to control the features through audio and video. Not everyone viewing your content uses a mouse or keyboard to navigate their controls. Hence, it’s essential to have video and audio controls.

How to Convert a Standard PDF Into an Accessible PDF?

A standard PDF needs to be tagged to provide a structured representation of the content for screen readers to interpret. Tagging a PDF document has always been a time-consuming and cumbersome task.

There are many PDF document remediators in the market that offer licensed software for PDF remediation that traditionally come with a high-learning curve requiring extensive knowledge of the various standards making the tagging process arduous, time-consuming and comes with a hefty price tag.

PDF remediation is the process of accurately tagging an inaccessible pdf by identifying and tagging the document structure with appropriate tags for page elements like headings, paragraphs, image alt text, nested lists, and tables making it accessible.
In the case of scanned PDFs, the documents need to be processed through optical character recognition (OCR). OCR takes a scanned image of a page and converts it into text layer and then after that, the document is tagged.

What Makes PDF Accessibility Important?

Currently, around 10% of the world’s population, around 650 million people, live with some form of disability. This number is expected to increase as the population ages and along with it the global awareness for disability-inclusive solutions are also on the rise.
o make millions of digital PDF content that is available on the internet accessible is now more essential than ever. Not addressing the needs of disabled users, only makes one lose brand credibility and potential business.

How Does PREP Help?

PREP is a PDF remediation platform that is intuitive, affordable, and scalable. It has the framework to deliver a high volume of accurately tagged accessible PDFs in a short span of time.
The AI-driven platform quickly detects the base tags and allows for one-click tagging process for headers, text, adding alt text to image, lists and nested lists. You can also re-arrange the reading order with a simple drag and drop motion. The highly intuitive interface allows one to effortlessly tag tables, lists, nested lists, and TOCs.

PREP’s remediation process is 70% automated, reducing turnaround time significantly regardless of the document complexity. It also comes with a robust built-in PDF accessibility checker tool that validates your documents’ compliance against Section 508, WCAG 2.0, PDF/UA, and HHS guidelines.

So, if you are looking for PDF remediation software or service that is simpler, cheaper and better than competing solutions, click here.
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Why all PDF’s need to be made accessible

“Carol enrolls for a math course at a university. She checks the course material and required readings and finds that there are 20 PDFs in the course. Carol opens her documents. She tries to skim through the content to understand the material using a screen reader. Slowly she loses her sense of optimism. These PDFs are no good … Do you recognize the feeling? Probably not. ”

PDF is one of the most widely used formats for digitizing print material. PDF Remediation is the process of tagging elements of PDF documents so that people using assistive technology(screen readers) can get the same information from the document that anyone would.
The tags identify the elements and inform the assistive technology about the order in which they are meant to be read. PDF elements that are used most frequently include images(alt-text), headings, links, lists and tables. These are the most commonly required elements but there can be other elements which need to be tagged.
A Word document or a Powerpoint file that was inaccessible before can’t become accessible if it is just saved as PDF. It needs to be remediated first in the authoring tool and even then sometimes these PDFs need to be remediated.
The ubiquity of PDF comes from the fact that PDF format is stable and consistent across many platforms and a variety of devices. The Portable Document Format isn’t going away any time soon, and as more of our digital information is available only in PDF format, ensuring that the information contained in these PDFs is accessible becomes increasingly important.
These are few key benefits of using an accessible, tagged PDF:
  • PDF is consistent in appearance across all platforms.
  • Properly tagged PDF documents will work well with screen readers such as NVDA and JAWS.
  • For mobile users, Adobe Reader now includes basic support for VoiceOver(iOS) and Talkback(Android), ensuring that tagged PDF documents can be read easily.
  • Accessible PDFs are search engine friendly and can also improve the SEO of online documents.
It requires specific PDF remediation tools to remediate these documents. Looking for a great tool that’s AI powered and saves time and effort to remediate your document which is compliant with WCAG standards ? Have a look at PREP.
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  • Reliable, Intuitive, Cloud-based Platform
  • Section 508, WCAG 2.1, & ADA Compliant
  • Exponential Cost Savings of up to 50%
  • Easy Inter-format Conversions

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