In July of this year, the long-awaited new web accessibility law came into effect as an addition to the existing law, which has been in force for years. This law marks a significant milestone towards a more inclusive and accessible digital environment. Let's delve into what this law entails and why it's so important
Web Accessibility: What Does It Mean?
Web accessibility refers to the concept of designing digital resources, such as web pages and apps, in a way that makes them usable for a wide range of people, including those with various forms of disabilities. This encompasses physical, cognitive, sensory, and neurological challenges. The goal is to eliminate unnecessary barriers so that everyone, regardless of their abilities, can fully participate in the digital world. Individuals with visual impairments, hearing impairments, motor difficulties, and other disabilities should have the same access as everyone else.
Expansion of the Law in 2023
The new addition to the law, which took effect in Europe in July 2023, brings a crucial change: it expands the scope to include digital mail and freedom of information cases. This means that digital messages must also be accessible to people with disabilities. In addition to the existing web accessibility standards, the same standards now apply to digital mail and its content.
Web Accessibility and Freedom of Information Cases
A noteworthy aspect of this expansion is its impact on freedom of information cases. With an annual influx of freedom of information cases in Danish society, it becomes essential to ensure that documents and information are web accessible. However, challenges arise in making old and low-quality scanned documents accessible. Furthermore, the use of digital tools that can remove the metadata that enables web accessibility complicates matters. This means that even if efforts were previously made to ensure content accessibility, it could be unintentionally destroyed in the process.
Redaction Software and Web Accessibility
In today's digital world, redaction online documents plays a critical role in safeguarding personal information. Historically, most redaction software solutions have focused on removing all surrounding metadata when redacting a document. This is done to protect potential personal data, and therefore, many providers choose to follow the well-known principle: "better safe than sorry."
However, here lies the challenge: This approach carries the risk of destroying the web accessibility that was established during the upload. In many cases, metadata contains crucial information that enables web accessibility, and removing this data could necessitate restarting the process. Also read our article on metadata
The Importance of Considering the Right Redaction Software Tool
If you're considering acquiring a redaction software tool, it's crucial to understand its impact on web accessibility. This is especially true if the tool involves importing documents into a system. It's important to be aware of how this affects data formatting and the ability to maintain web accessibility.
At Cleardox we have invested time and effort in developing a solution that preserves web accessibility of PDF documents during redaction. We ensure that necessary metadata is retained and that pseudonymous elements can be read by screen readers. Our goal is to enable everyone to interact with documents on equal terms.
Try our online redaction software solution here
The new web accessibility law represents a significant step towards a more inclusive digital world. By expanding web accessibility standards to include digital mail and freedom of information cases, the law sets a new standard for digital inclusion that will benefit all citizens in Denmark. At Cleardox, we take this challenge seriously and strive to deliver solutions that are both accessible and redacted.