Braille Works

Enterprise-class document transformation

For more than a decade, OpenText’s industry-leading document transformation solutions have been used by some of the largest companies in the world to transform, re-engineer, and repurpose print streams, images, and documents to address the needs of people with visual impairments. OpenText’s document transformation technology includes manual and automated remediation solutions, OpenText™ Document Accessibility and OpenText™ Automated Output Accessibility. When documents such as PDFs are converted to formats that are accessible to readers with visual impairments, the content must be ‘remediated’ to ensure that all of the relevant information, visually and structurally, is captured and presented in a logical, understandable way.

OpenText Document Accessibility delivers an intuitive interface designed for an organization’s document remediators, making it easy to manually remediate ad hoc PDF documents for readers with low-vision, with automated tagging and a fully featured remediation environment. Users can take advantage of the powerful remediation tools to edit tags on a PDF, apply alternate or actual text, add and change headings, modify tables, and more. The solution enables organizations to easily comply with accessibility standards and regulations.

For companies with high volumes of documents, OpenText Automated Output Accessibility allows organizations to automatically capture and transform high-volume print streams into accessible PDF documents for their customers with visual impairments. The solution is ideal for financial institutions, healthcare providers, utilities, governments, and other organizations that consistently produce high-volume documents such as invoices, monthly banking, credit card or investment statements and present them online. The solution is built on proven technology that can process, extract, transform, repurpose, and personalize high volumes of data and documents to allow organizations to present the content in a way that is accessible and usable for all customers.

Lowering costs to increase accessibility

Several years ago, Braille Works began using OpenText’s output transformation tools to automatically extract key information from its customers’ documents and feed that into an alternative format workflow. Schubert described how the OpenText solution supports the Braille Works process, “We need to ingest, dissect, and parse out PDF documents. When a customer sends a print stream to their standard print vendor, they flag individuals who have requested large print, braille, or audio. They send those documents to us and using OpenText™ Output Transformation software we extract from that document, in a logical fashion, all of the important data that needs to be converted to braille, large print, or audio.” By automating its processes, Braille Works can deliver more costeffective solutions to meet its customers’ document accessibility needs, which translates to improved services for people with visual impairments. Schubert explained, “The OpenText Output Transformation software allows us to be much, much more efficient and create a substantially larger number of documents with the existing staff that we have. If we couldn’t do this on an automated basis, there would not be a cost-effective way to create these documents in braille, large print, and audio.”

A partnership to connect consumers with accessible content

While Braille Works specializes in producing traditional alternative formats such as braille, large print, audio, or CD, it doesn’t provide high-volume automated remediation. Likewise, while OpenText’s solutions allow companies to perform automated as well as ad hoc manual remediation, it does not offer alternative format services such as braille printing. With Braille Works’ depth of experience in the production of alternative format content and OpenText’s expertise in high-volume accessibility solutions, the companies have struck upon a beneficial partnership. Schubert explained how OpenText and Braille Works solutions complement each other: “We need a solution for some of our larger clients that require remediation of statements and other high-volume documents. Similarly, OpenText is very strong in automated document remediation, but they don’t do other things that complete the accessibility picture.”

With firsthand knowledge of OpenText’s experience and expertise, Braille Works confidently recommends OpenText when approached by companies requiring high-volume PDF remediation services. In turn, OpenText refers Braille Works to customers seeking traditional alternative formats. The value of the partnership was evidenced recently when a leading U.S. insurance company turned to OpenText for an automated high-volume solution to provide accessible documents such as insurance policies, to its customers with visual impairments. The insurance carrier also wanted to serve those customers who prefer traditional formats over digital ones. OpenText brought in trusted partner Braille Works to produce the documents in braille, large print, or audio. Together, the two companies provided an end-to-end document accessibility solution to help the insurer deliver the highest quality service to its customers, as well as meet government regulations.

Schubert summarized Braille Works’ relationship with OpenText both as a customer and as a partner in making the world a more readable place, “We use the OpenText software in our automation process to help us extract data and be more efficient in the production of braille, large print, and audio. On the OpenText side, we have clients that have documents that need to be remediated—tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of documents on a monthly basis. Partnering with OpenText works very well. It’s a great relationship. It provides accessibility to more people, and that’s a very big deal. It provides people with the independence and freedom to manage their own information—it’s amazing what that brings to life.”