The IHS Epidemiology department had a critical vaccine recommendation update that they needed to disseminate via both print and web. Their content was in a PDF, but it could not be remediated and made section 508 compliant. The client tried to go back to the person who generated the document, but they were not able to put the content in an accessible format.

I recommended creating a new webpage with the content of the document, which would make the content easy to read on a mobile device and simple to update as well as making it accessible.

The primary audience for the update is providers who need to access the information while working with patients. A link to the printable PDF allows providers to have a hard copy, while the mobile-responsive webpage lets them access the information easily on the go without having to zoom and scroll.

The final hurdle for this update was two flowcharts describing treatment algorithms. Flowcharts are notoriously difficult to make 508 compliant, especially in image form, because of their complexity and text volume. I requested that the client obtain a plain text alternative that describes the same algorithm. We provided the text alternative in a collapsible below each flowchart.

For users who can access the image, they are able to find all of the relevant information and do not have to scroll past the text version. They also have the text version if that format is more useful to them.

For users who cannot access the image, they have the option of skipping over lengthy alt text for flowcharts that aren’t relevant and going directly to the collapsible object to find what they need. The additional text formatting options in the collapsible (as compared to image alt text) means the information can be organized logically for users rather than in one long paragraph.