Have you noticed more companies are preaching their support for accessibility? We now even have a day set aside for the recognition of accessibility on a global scale, but outside of the Microsofts and Apples and Googles of the world, what is the rest of the industry doing to put their rhetoric to the test?

It used to be that companies could claim ignorance about what it took to make accessibility a priority. They didn’t have the staff or the resources or the knowhow to make the products inclusive of blind and visually impaired customers. Then diversity, equity, and inclusion crashed into the public consciousness, and all of a sudden everyone was rushing to find ways to make themselves out to be sensitive to the needs of marginalized communities.

Pneuma Solutions is seeking an experienced front-end web developer for a desktop application using Electron. This is a remote contract position.

What you’ll be working on

We are currently developing a web browser based on Electron, designed to make the web easier to use for blind people. In addition to standard web browsing functionality, our browser will include features designed specifically for blind users, including an automatic reader mode, an accessibility overlay blocker, and integrations with our subscription services. You will be responsible for taking our current proof of concept, implementing the remaining features, completing the user interface, and preparing the product for release.

Accessible information is gaining ground on the war against the PDF. In fact, presenting information only inaccessible PDFs is becoming illegal.

But, will an accessible web design be too expensive of an overhaul?

The answer might just surprise you.

But why are PDFs a problem for print disabled people in the first place?

It’s important to know, governmental and corporate libraries globally currently hold billions of legacy PDF documents. These documents contain valuable information, but are inaccessible to print disabled individuals.

Why?

Because PDFs were designed as a print-centric format with accessibility retrofitted as an afterthought, if it’s there at all.

The pandemic has the online World scrambling to find ways to patch glaring accessibility issues. Website overlays are just one example of quick fix solutions that attempt to bridge persistent gaps. Except, once deployed, companies realize the shortcuts only create bad press and do little to make their products and services more inclusive.

More than empty promises, Pneuma Solutions will position you for inclusive success by providing your digital content to everyone with print disabilities seamlessly.

One of your greatest assets is digital content. You work hard to create informative manuals, training materials, billing statements, and a great variety of content central to your business operation.

At Pneuma Solutions, we stand by our commitment to excellence. So does every other software developer, right? But the difference between us and everyone else is that Ours is a cause, not just the bottom line. The day we become irrelevant will be the day we can say accessibility has become so ubiquitous as to be commonplace, and that will be a day worth celebrating.

Until then, we work in a pool of companies following distinct strategies in an attempt to make accessibility universal. We each have our competing vision of what that looks like, and no one vision is better than or more correct than the other. There is more than enough work to go around.

In the summer of 2016 the United Nations declared the Internet to be a human right. A noble declaration, but for print impaired people like me, the feel-good words of a global cause and everyday life can be so different that we feel like we aren’t even part of the conversation.

Here at Pneuma Solutions, we support any campaign to put information into the hands of as many people as possible; however, it has been our experience that making information available and making it accessible to the letter of the law are two different issues and need to be considered as such when discussing access to information by those of us that have print disabilities.

There’s just about nothing more frustrating for blind people than trying to use an app, only to find that the app is inaccessible. Maybe your screen reader can’t read a key part of the app, or maybe it can’t read anything at all. When apps are developed using standard buttons, edit boxes, list boxes, tables, or other user interface elements, it’s not hard to make them accessible. But some apps are developed using a non-standard user interface toolkit, and these toolkits are completely inaccessible. Implementing accessibility from scratch in a user interface toolkit is difficult and time-consuming, so it usually doesn’t get done, except in the top few user interface toolkits with heavy corporate backing.

Were you planning on purchasing Scribe For Meetings? If you’ve delayed the purchase, it’s time to act now. But, before we get to that, let me share some other bits of Pneuma Solutions news.

Pneuma Solutions Scribe Augmented Media Remediation Platform is now available in your geographical region. This means YOUR data, in YOUR country.

Scribe is also available on Amazon’s GovCloud infrastructure.

Scribe for Meetings made a splash earlier this year when Pneuma Solutions announced the ability to make PowerPoint presentations on Zoom equally accessible to print impaired participants. Honestly, it’s not something we had put on our development roadmap, but when the pandemic struck we pivoted to the new reality.

We’re proud to announce the release of the Scribe for Meetings browser extension.

Now there are even fewer steps to take when you need to attend an online meeting and enjoy real-time access to digital content presented on screen during the meeting.

The process is ridiculously easy:

1. Download the extension at the link below.
2. Log into your registered meeting the same as you always have on your PC.
3. Receive automatic notification the meeting has been registered, and enjoy the presentation!

Follow the links you need for Firefox or Chrome/Edge.

This extension marks another milestone in Pneuma Solutions’ goal of leveling the information access barrier for those with print disabilities.

Matt and I recently had the opportunity to chat with Jonathan Mosen on his Mosen At Large podcast. As any long-time listener can attest, the show is consistently packed with great information and thought-provoking discussion.

Among other things, Episode 139 featured a demonstration of Scribe for Meetings, and the quality of his  presentation is, as always, impeccable. We think the best way to understand the Scribe experience is by trying it out for yourself, but if you want to hear a quality, unbiased hands-on demonstration, then Jonathan can be counted on to deliver a balanced perspective.

Check out the specific segment here:

After listening, if you have any questions, we’d be glad to take those in the comments section below.

Recently on the Mosen At Large podcast, a listener wrote in with a thoughtful question. He wrote:

“I’d like to share some thoughts / questions about Pneuma Solutions Scribe and its promise to make documents accessible, hoping to get a  broader understanding and perhaps develop a fair opinion. Here is another company that promises fully automated accessibility for an affordable price, but I wonder what do they really mean by accessibility, how far their AI can go and how much of the remediation process they have been able to automate. I cannot imagine it going beyond OCR, automatic image descriptions and the addition of some structural tags for headings, lists and possibly simple tables.