How Legal Professionals Can Ensure PDF Accessibility?

The primary duty of a lawyer is to help those with limited knowledge of legal procedures and representation. And a lawyer may get clients from all walks of life – including those with disabilities of vision and cognizance. For this reason, law firms are now heavily focused on digital accessibility.

Any content published on a law firm’s website should be accessible to everyone. It is imperative that any legal information published in a place of public accommodation such as on a website, blog, or social media – should be perceivable, understandable, operable, and reliable for everyone.

Therefore, law firms are quickly revising the content published online under their names through PDF accessibility services, assistive technologies, and document remediation.

Benefits Of Accessible PDFs for Legal Professionals

Besides being a legal obligation, improving digital accessibility has several benefits for lawyers. Some of them are listed below –

Improved Communication & Collaboration – Accessible PDFs enable equitable access to legal information. It encourages a conversation among all members of the society on an equal footing. People with disabilities can also be more active in society with proper legal information.
Legal Implications – Judicial systems worldwide have prohibited discrimination against those with disabilities, and there are legal implications for any goods, services, privileges, and advantages they cannot use based on disability. Legal information published on a law firm’s website also falls under the purview of this law. Therefore, law firms can avoid serious legal implications by ensuring their content is accessible.
Transparency – Clients in a law firm appreciate transparency. If your law firm has clients with disabilities of visual or cognitive impairment, improving PDF accessibility garners trust through better transparency.
Digital Inclusivity – Using accessible PDFs to publish legal information demonstrates a law firm’s commitment to digital inclusivity. It shows that the law firm believes in equal access to information for everyone.

Some Key Elements of an Accessible PDF

Proper Document Structure – Accessible PDFs have a proper structure with titles, headings, and subheadings. If a visually impaired user wishes to hear the content using text-to-speech software, the structure helps the software interpret the content correctly. Accessibility software can also create a comprehensive table of contents for your document with a proper structure.
Alternative Text for Images – Alternative or ALT text for images in a document helps braille and text-to-speech software accurately describe the image. Alternative text is also essential for search engine optimization. If proper ALT text is provided, screen readers can describe the image’s content to help visually impaired readers understand the picture.
Consistent Font Usage – To improve PDF accessibility, the font usage in the document is always consistent. It increases the readability and ensures the document looks the same on-screen as in print. Fonts such as Arial, Verdana, and Helvetica are considered good choices for accessibility.
Color Contrast – Color is an important element of conveying information in an online medium. Those with color vision deficiencies may find your choice of color contrast difficult to navigate. Use color wisely and provide sufficient contrast between text and background colors.

As a law firm, it is increasingly critical that all the content you publish online is tested and tweaked for accessibility.

Using meaningful hyperlink text, providing a document structure, alternative text for images, and tagging the document are essential for making an accessible PDF. Many efficient tagging tips are available on our website to help you improve PDF accessibility.

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