Blog

customer engagement

Six Myths Busted Regarding Section 508 PDF/UA Compliance and Production Generation of PDF/UA Documents

Posted on

Myth #1:  Section 508 compliance doesn’t apply to PDF documents. FACT:  Since June 2001, the law has required all content on government hosted or contractor hosted websites and intranet sites to be 508 compliant. PDF files tend to be produced by someone other than the website developers or administrators. This content often goes overlooked with respect to accessibility – even though PDF files represent a huge volume of the documents that site visitors use every day. SOLUTION: DocOrigin has advanced PDF/UA preprocessing capability. Myth #2:  Good assistive technology can solve all accessibility problems. FACT:  However advanced, Assistive Technology (or AT) can’t follow the continuation of an article split through multiple pages or guess what is meant by a particular graphic. That information has to be provided within the document structure. AT can only work with the information provided. Accessibility is nothing more than providing the information in a format that is easily understood. SOLUTION: DocOrigin provides the capability of creating business forms and document templates in the correct logical document structure for AT to provide the highest level of positive user experience. Myth #3:  A document is fully 508-compliant if it has passed Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker. FACT:  Adobe Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker cannot verify compliance with Section 508 since, among other limitations, it is incapable of verifying correct logical reading order. A combination of automated and manual checks are required to test a document for 508 compliance. SOLUTION: DocOrigin is capable of establishing the correct “logical” order for the reader to follow. This is done once at composition time using DocOrigin Design. In production, DocOrigin merges data (CSV, FRL, XML) from the line of business software without requiring changes to the data being generated today. The logic in the form design software dynamically structures the PDF/UA, so no post-processing step is required to produce the PDF/UA. This makes it possible to generate thousands of PDF/UA documents per minute. Myth #4:  Section 508 compliance means it will read well in JAWS. FACT:  It’s possible to tag a PDF to be compliant with Section 508 and still deliver a negative experience in JAWS or other screen-readers. The current Section 508 regulation permits, for example, a 100-page document to include nothing but paragraph tags, offering no navigational accommodations to AT users. SOLUTION: DocOrigin will assist in providing a positive user experience in accessing the information contained in the PDF document using pre-document generation sequencing and tagging. Myth #5:  A PDF is accessible if it can be read using Adobe’s Read Out Loud feature. FACT:  Adobe’s Read Out Loud feature is not considered assistive technology and cannot be used to verify compliance with Section 508. This is because the Read Out Loud feature cannot represent the document’s logical structure (tags). SOLUTION: With DocOrigin, the logical flow can be designed into the document. Myth #6:  I can tag my PDF file to be 508 compliant by using the Advanced > Accessibility > Add Tags to Document function in Adobe Acrobat Professional. FACT:  This is only the first step to creating a 508 compliant PDF file. Formerly, no software could achieve full accessibility and usability without human assistance. SOLUTION: With DocOrigin’s advanced PDF/UA composition capability, the user is able to create a fully compliant PDF/UA document or form that can generate high volume production PDF/UA documents. The design of the PDF/UA is created in the composition software and once completed, it can be run in production without user intervention.  No post-processes software or PDF to PDF/UA conversion is required. Finally, you can generate production PDF/UA statements, invoices, and order acknowledgements with a Design Once, Generate Many process you can rely on. Learn more about DocOrigin’s PDF/UA capability here or contact us for more information here.

Read More

DocOrigin Business Communications Center Removes Barriers to Personalization

Posted on

Everybody talks about the advantages that personalized business communications documents can bring to a business. Stacks of statistics point to the dramatic benefits that companies from all industries can achieve by creating personalized, relevant and targeted customer communications. But reaching that goal is difficult when you depend on complex technology, cumbersome systems and specialized expertise. DocOrigin BCC Brings New Life to Customer Experience Management At Eclipse, we pioneered the way to more agile, more responsive, and more beneficial customer communications. Now we’ve taken things a step further with the new DocOrigin Business Communications Center, a robust software solution which allows you to create campaigns, messaging, and manage legal T&Cs without engaging IT for ongoing projects. Now, the design and delivery of important business communications that serve as a vehicle for custom marketing and messaging are put in the hands of the stakeholders within the business and are fueled by the data generated by any business software.  Take the Wheel of Superior Business Communications As many users will tell you, making even the simplest change to a legacy document, like an invoice or a statement, can take weeks or months and cost thousands. And making significant changes or improvements is often out of reach of the typical business user. We remove that roadblock by letting you create personalized messages and customized content using text and graphics without requiring IT. Line-of-business users control the entire development life cycle for all customer communications and more easily manage variations and versions in even the most complex enterprise environment. Make it Mobile and Social Whether you want to communicate in print, or use online, mobile or social media, it is important to adopt systems and solutions that make it easy – not more difficult – to reach customers with multi-channel communications. The DocOrigin Business Communications Center enables business users and marketing specialists with the ability to easily set up personalized and targeted messaging for use across multiple communications and channels. And once the content has been created, front-line knowledge workers can deliver messages to your customers based on their behaviors, preferences, or demographics with business rules in plain language. In short, you don’t have to be a programmer to deliver the right message to the right customer, in the right media. Next Steps Now you can more effectively compete in a world awash in multi-media marketing messages with highly targeted, relevant and personalized customer communications that cut through the clutter of competing campaigns. You can improve your outreach to new customers and boost your relationship with existing customers with more personal, relevant and targeted communications. DocOrigin’s Business Communications Center is the solution for designing, generating and delivering dynamic business documents and a secret weapon to level the playing field with your competition. Click here to learn more today, or call 678.408.1245.

Read More

How Loyal Are Your Customers?

Posted on

Companies spend millions to attract new customers. After all, every company must continually gain new customers and expand market share. But gaining new customers is only part of the equation for long-term success; organizations must also retain repeat customers in order to survive.

Read More

BCC Software to host Steve Dearing on monthly webcast, Lien In

Posted on

We are pleased to share some exciting news about one of our partners, BCC Software. They will be hosting a special edition of their monthly webcast, “Lien In,” on Tuesday, April 4, at 11 a.m. EST. Steve Dearing, Director of Corporate Reporting at the United States Postal Service will join host Chris Lien, President of BCC Software.

Read More

Improve customer experience with personalization

Posted on

Make it Personal It seems like everyone is talking about customer experience these days… and for good reason. A 2% improvement in the retention of your existing customers can equate to a 10% reduction in operating expenses. A 5% reduction in the customer defection rate can increase profits by as much as 95%. Clearly, retaining customers can pay, but how do you do it?

Read More

Cloud Fax Solutions vs. On Premise Fax

Posted on

Using on-premise fax servers for production faxing, you will need physical fax servers and telco fax lines at the corporate office and your disaster recovery center. For departmental offices and at remote offices, you may need more fax servers or at a minimum, individual fax machines and phone lines.

Read More

Document Accessibility…Why It Matters

Posted on

Blindness affects more than 21 million people in North America. The World Health Organization estimates 246 million people worldwide suffer from some form of visual impairment – with 39 million of those classified as blind. What’s more, according to the National Eye Institute, the number of people who are blind or have low vision is projected to double in the next decade. For the visually impaired, the ability to access bills, statements and other transactional documents means greater independence. For companies, accommodating customers who are visually impaired is not just good business, it’s required by federal legislation. To promote compliance and support forward-thinking corporate initiatives, many organizations are seeking solutions for the delivery of billing statements and other transactional documents for visually impaired customers in alternate formats. 508 Document Accessibility Compliance  In 1998, the US Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others. This requirement is being extended to include all public agencies that interact with the public. PDF/UA – “Universally Accessible” What are some options to consider in order to better serve your customers with visual impairment?  Most recently, Universally Accessible PDFs, or PDF/UA documents, have been developed for people with disabilities who require assistive technology to communicate.  According to Dr. Judith Dixon, the consumer relations officer for the National Library Service for the Blind, universal document accessibility means employing all of the above. “An accessible PDF document is quite accessible for people who have the right equipment,” says Dr. Dixon. “But it is important for any company to know their constituents. Not all people have computers, or can use them effectively, so other alternatives need to also be used and considered.” What Can You Do? We have one solution that helps provide alternatives. Our flagship document generation software, DocOrigin, now integrates the design and creation of PDF/UA, meeting ISO 14289-1 and WCAG 2.0 standards for PDF documents. As the “Baby Boomer” generation continues to age, the number of people requiring the use of assistive technology increases. With PDF/UA conforming files, readers and assistive technology, these individuals and others with disabilities can have equal access to online information. In particular: PDF/UA compliant documents contain tags that identify content according to structure, allowing documents containing images, form fields, tables, lists and other information to be rendered properly utilizing a number of different assistive devices such as screen magnifiers, text-to-voice devices and braille keyboards and readers. Click here to learn more about PDF/UA, and how worldwide legislation seeks to guarantee equal access to information for all. Moving Forward DocOrigin makes it easy to comply with standards set out by PDF/UA by building compliant documents as part of the document design and generation process, negating the need for post-processing software or intervention to render documents according to these standards. Want to know more? Contact us today for a free demonstration of DocOrigin and it’s easy to use PDF/UA capabilities.

Read More

Transform Your Business Operations

Book A Demo