Document Conversion

This is my primary website development skill: Section 508 and WCAG fixes. What I can do for you is take a document that is not accessible by any measure and convert it to something that looks great no matter what, and is also screen reader friendly.

In this case, a few years ago, my area’s public transportation provider made the decision to shut down service ahead of an approaching winter storm, while still running buses for as long as safely possible. Someone from operations was able to quickly put out a table, quite possibly quickly created in Microsoft Word, to get the information out to the public. However, it was a quick screen shot of a table covering the two service areas. It had no layout. It had shorthands that not everyone would understand. As an image, it absolutely could not be accessed by screen readers. Even if it was a proper table, it had no layout tags so a screen reader would have difficulty deciphering the table – if it wasn’t impossible.

This is where I can come in. I will take the document and convert it to a format that looks great no matter how someone accesses it.

• Long Story Short

• The Challenge:

  Taking an image of a table that had no layout structure and converting it to screen reader accessible text

• The Result:

  A table was contructed in a way that persons of all abilities would be able to parse and understand the context of the data.

Hampton Roads Transit put out these tables of ending times for bus service when heavy snow was expected for its service area. This is in a format that is inaccessible to those with impairments that make reading text on images difficult or impossible. After the images, I hand–converted them to something that is accessible to people of all abilities.

This is meant to be a demonstration of my skills at making documents accessible.

Were you struggling to read the two images that HRT posted? I have put together this table in a format that is accessible to everyone.

Allow me to present to you how I would do this. My Winter Weather Alert page shows how I would handle posting these two images up on a website.

Winter Weather Alert

Service Date: January 21^st, 2022

Due to the forcasted snowfall, all buses will end service with the last trip of the evening being the first trip in the 6 PM hour. Please refer to the table below for what time the last trip is for your bus.

Errors in Southside Bus Service Table

The times were copied exactly from the original images, including any possible errors. If this was being done in a live production environment, I would’ve asked what the correct times were, as well as why one route was omitted from the list.

What I think are the corrections that need to be made are below

• 2 Hampton Boulevard: Last trip from Navy Exchange Mall should be 6:25 PM
• 8 Tidewater Dr: Last trip from Evelyn T. Butts Ave should be 6:48 PM
• 13 Campostella Rd: Last trip from Summit Pointe should be 6:28 PM
• 44 Turnpike Rd: Last trip from Downtown Norfolk Transit Center should probably be listed as 6:00 PM
• 50 Greenwood Dr: Route is missing in original document. Since it ends in the 6:00 PM hour, it will run normal schedule anyway