Tools for Assisting Content Creators in Remediating PDF Documents for Accessibility

Dr. Jonathan Lazar

Professor, College of Information Studies (iSchool)

Director, Trace Research and Development Center

Core faculty, Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL)

University of Maryland

jlazar [at] umd.edu

Abstract: Many PDF documents are inaccessible for people with disabilities, creating barriers in education, science, commerce, e-government, and recreation. Our previous research on PDF accessibility including surveys, interviews, and usability testing, has determined that documents in PDF format are considered harder to make accessible than documents in other formats primarily due to the insufficient tools available to assist content creators. That means that even when content creators are aware of the accessibility barriers in their documents, they cannot easily figure out how to make the corrections. Our current work, a collaboration of researchers at the University of Maryland and Adobe Research, focuses on the development of tools to assist content creators in remediating their PDF files to improve accessibility. We developed a new tool called Ally which utilizes best practices from other areas of HCI research, to create a more efficient and effective interaction approach for remediating regions, headers, reading order, and tables in a PDF document for improved accessibility. In a usability study, twenty participants attempted to complete the same PDF accessibility remediation tasks using both Ally and a standard industry tool, Adobe Acrobat Pro. Ally was almost twice as fast and three times as accurate compared to Acrobat Pro, with participants reporting a strong preference for and a much higher level of satisfaction with Ally. We are continuing to expand Ally to include other aspects of PDF remediation, including PDF forms.

Bio: Jonathan Lazar, PhD, LLM is a professor in the College of Information Studies (iSchool) at the University of Maryland. Professor Lazar has authored or edited 14 books, including Accessible Technology and the Developing World (co-edited with Michael Stein), Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction (2nd edition, co-authored with Heidi Feng and Harry Hochheiser), Ensuring Digital Accessibility Through Process and Policy (co-authored with Dan Goldstein and Anne Taylor), Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology (co-edited with Michael Stein), and Web Usability: A User-Centered Design Approach. Professor Lazar has published over 150 refereed articles in journals, conference proceedings, and edited books, frequently serves as an adviser to U.S. government agencies, regularly provides testimony at the federal and state levels, and multiple U.S. federal regulations cite his research. At the University of Maryland iSchool, he teaches courses on human-computer interaction, user-centered design, accessibility, and legal research methods. He is the recipient of the 2021 ACM SIGCHI Academy Award, the 2020 ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility, the 2017 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, and the 2016 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award. Dr. Lazar recently served as the general chair of the ACM ASSETS 2021 conference. At the University of Maryland, Dr. Lazar is a faculty member in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) and serves as director of the Trace Research and Development Center, one of the world's oldest research centers on technology and disability.