An accessibility champion’s journey to digital inclusion using Adobe's transformative solutions
As we become increasingly interconnected, the significance of accessibility has extended far beyond its initial purpose: to enable people with diverse abilities to navigate websites or applications. True accessibility now means creating an inclusive environment that gives everyone equal access to information, regardless of their abilities. Several countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and many countries in the European Union, have made accessibility is a legal requirement.
Enter Acrobat Pro, an indispensable tool in the realm of accessible digital documents. Playing an essential role in ensuring PDFs are accessible and usable by individuals with disabilities, Acrobat promotes inclusivity, equal access to information, and compliance with accessibility standards. However, transforming accessibility concepts into reality still requires champions — and that's where Dax Castro steps in.
Castro is both an Adobe Certified PDF Accessibility Trainer and Certified Accessible Document Specialist (ADS), and in collaboration with Adobe InDesign expert Chad Chelius, Castro co-founded CHAX Training and Consulting. Their mission? To passionately advocate for accessibility and empower others with the knowledge and skills to make it a reality.
Driving accessibility education and adoption with Acrobat Pro
Castro has made it his mission first to educate organizations on the necessity of creating accessible content and then guide them in seamlessly incorporating accessibility best practices into their everyday workflows. His consulting firm processes a whopping 10,000 pages of documents each month, helping make them compliant with accessibility standards.
The impact of Castro's training programs is remarkable, having reached an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 individuals as a conservative estimate. This accessibility superstar also works with some major players on the global stage, like World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Program, auditing their documents for accessibility and helping them create accessible content for all.
In addition to his consulting work, Castro actively engages with the accessibility community on several platforms. Castro runs an accessibility Facebook group PDF Accessibility with over 3,600 members and also records a podcast called Chax Chat Accessibility Unraveled, which has over 90 episodes and more than 30,000 downloads to date. Through these diverse platforms, Castro champions accessibility and provides expertise by fielding questions and discussing important topics around accessibility.
Castro's commitment to supporting accessibility extends beyond virtual platforms. He actively contributes to the Adobe Community, and he recently created comprehensive walk-throughs and illustrations for the PDF Accessibility Tutorials, which are featured in the Discover section of the Creative Cloud. In all these cases and many others, Castro regularly goes above and beyond to promote accessibility and empower people in making their digital content more inclusive.
Pioneering achievements in inclusive design
The sighted world is often blissfully ignorant of the challenges faced by the visually impaired. In one instance of his groundbreaking work, Castro worked with the Blind Institute of Technology to helped rework organizational charts. Organizational charts contain a lot of non-textual information that sighted people take for granted: the lines connecting boxes, how many people are in a group, which ones are the supervisors, and how various departments relate to each other.
For users that are blind, low vision or have cognitive limits, listening to the text is a must. However, these charts can be extremely challenging to interpret, as they rely on a great deal of inferred visual information. Castro’s solution was to program specific accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat by providing hidden text in the org chart, allowing screen readers to navigate person-by-person and better interpret the relationships between different roles and groups.
“Accessibility is more than access to the text. Understanding the relationships between items and the context of how the elements are visually arranged on the page adds meaning to the document. Harnessing the power of Adobe Acrobat and how it interacts with assistive technology allows us to push the boundaries of digital content and give the power of exploration and interpretation to the user.”
–Dax Castro, co-founder, CHAX Training and Consulting
Designing with accessibility in mind
Another area in which Castro has helped improve accessibility is in the navigation of PDFs themselves. Many PDFs are designed as a kind of mini-website, complete with a navigation menu at the top or side of each page. For people using assistive technology, these navigation components can be cumbersome. As the assistive technology navigates through each, the user must tab through the navigation anew on each and every page before getting to the main content of that page.
Castro used existing tags and the Actual text feature to add a shortcut that enables user to easily navigate to the next section of main content and skip the navigation. This innovative use of Acrobat Pro’s content tags gives the user a far better document experience. Castro leads by example, showing that true accessibility starts by understanding potential design barriers, then using that understanding to remove barriers and design interfaces with a vastly improved, inclusive user experience.
Accessibility for all aspects of life
The impact of Castro’s work extends beyond even what can be considered traditional accessibility challenges. When a Chax Chat listener reached out to express their frustration with accessing the newsletter distributed by an amateur radio operator group, Castro stepped in to help.
Amateur radio, also known as HAM radio, is a widely accessible and popular hobby for individuals with visual impairments. However, in this case, the HAM radio newsletter contained French and English text and was not designed with accessibility in mind, making it challenging for these hobbyists to stay informed about the latest news and developments.
Castro gladly took on the task of educating the newsletter designer, essentially teaching them how to fish for themselves. Castro delivered a series of Acrobat Pro and InDesign training sessions, thereby enabling a new generation of designers to understand the importance of considering accessibility from the outset. As a result, the HAM hobbyists gained easier access to their newsletter, enabling them to stay connected and up to date with the vibrant world of amateur radio.
An enduring commitment to a more accessible digital world
The work that Castro is doing with CHAX Training and Consulting is more than a service; it's a movement toward broader inclusivity in the digital space. His work underscores the idea that “born accessibility” — designing with accessibility in mind from the get-go — is the best and easiest way to ensure that digital content is accessible to everyone, regardless of their abilities.
Castro's unwavering dedication to this cause is evident both in his personal and professional life. From proudly displaying his Adobe tattoo to adorning his car with a "PDF A11Y" license plate, he exemplifies his unwavering commitment to creating a more inclusive digital world. Through his hard work and advocacy, Castro is forging a path toward a future where accessibility is built into every one of our digital experiences starting from the ground up.