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Getting on Board with 508 Compliance – Blog Updates

We’ve been aiming to be more accessible for all, as a company. With that in mind, we shared some of the research we came across in a recent blog here. We also were researching alternative products to replace the Google URL Shortener and shared what we found here. Accessibility, reaching all of our possible audience, should be on our minds in everything that we do. We realized a little late, that an option we were excited for as a new URL shortener and much more, doesn’t even have the option for image descriptions or alt text! In other words, it does not meet 508 compliance requirements. When we reached out to that company they didn’t really seem concerned or have any plans to move in that direction in the future. This was really surprising considering the company is a global leader in the browser and search industry. As a global enterprise forms software company, this was enough to have us looking for another product that would meet the 508 requirements. We have learned a lot about 508 compliance by making production and interactive PDF/UA forms meet these requirements.  Merging data from major software vendors’ output and creating PDF/UA is critical to all companies that generate documents which are required to be accessible by their employees, customers, partners and vendors! We wanted to take the time to add this information to our recent blogs and highlight it here. The following updates are being made: No, GOOGLE, No! Please Don’t Take It Away Bitly is one of the most popular link shortening services. It allows for custom domains so you can brand your shortened link. Bitly also allows you to customize the actual shortened link (if your customization is still available). There are FREE and paid plan options. Bit.ly is one of the shorteners available at the multitasking Buffer. They provide link shortening, analytics services and image descriptions for accessibility. How can you and your business be universally accessible on social media? There are some great options out there to help you schedule and track your posts on your social sites. Many of these provide the ever useful url shorteners and analytics services but watch out because they don’t all help with accessibility. Be sure the service you are researching allows image descriptions or alt text in order to meet the needs of your audience with visual impairments. Lesson learned! We plan to put accessibility at the top of our list from the start when exploring new products and services and we hope to see it become more often the rule rather than the exception. We hope these corrections clarify the previous blogs on accessibility and URL shorteners. Let us know if you have more tips on these topics. 

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