Virtual Conference Pricing & Information Now Posted (Agenda will be announced Oct. 5)
Skip to Content

You are here: Home » Accessible Course Design, Alternate Format, Artificial Intelligence, Assistive Technology, Captioning/Transcription, Faculty Development & Support, Uncategorized » High-Volume PDF and Video Remediation: Practical Workflows, Tools, and Tradeoffs

High-Volume PDF and Video Remediation: Practical Workflows, Tools, and Tradeoffs

Scheduled at 11:45 in Colorado I-J on Friday, November 20.

#43145

Speaker(s)

  • Braden Watkins, a11 Accessibility
  • Rex Okland, ,
  • Owen Wayment, ,

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: All Levels
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

This session begins by identifying common challenges in managing large volumes of inaccessible PDFs and video in educational settings. Participants will learn a practical workflow covering intake, prioritization, processing, and quality assurance. Presenters will demonstrate tools for PDF tagging, captioning, and audio description using real examples. The session also explores combining automation with human review and offers strategies for scaling accessibility efforts across teams.

Abstract

Educational institutions are under growing pressure to make digital content accessible. But many are struggling to keep pace with the sheer volume of PDFs and video used across classes, departments, and entire campuses. Manual remediation is often slow, inconsistent, and hard to scale, especially when teams are already stretched thin. This session focuses on practical ways to manage large amounts of accessibility work without sacrificing quality or losing sight of diverse learner needs.

We’ll walk through a clear, step-by-step remediation workflow that covers intake, prioritization, processing, and quality assurance. Attendees will see how teams can organize large batches of content, including older materials and multimedia, while focusing efforts on the resources that matter most to students. Real examples will highlight common issues like poorly structured PDFs, missing captions, and limited staffing, along with realistic ways teams are addressing them.

The session also includes demonstrations of tools used for both PDF and video remediation, such as captioning, audio description, and document tagging. We’ll look at where automation can speed things up and where human oversight is still essential to ensure accuracy and usability. Manual, automated, and hybrid approaches will be compared, with an honest discussion of tradeoffs between speed, quality, and scalability. There will also be a focus on how these workflows can be applied in both K–12 and higher education settings. This includes coordinating efforts across teams, batching content effectively, and maintaining consistency across different groups. Attendees will leave with practical strategies they can start using right away to make accessibility work more manageable and scalable in their own environments.

Keypoints

  1. Automation with human review improves speed, scale, and accessibility quality.
  2. A structured workflow helps teams remediate content efficiently and consistently.
  3. Standardized processes help scale accessibility efforts across teams and units.

Disability Areas

Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Vision

Topic Areas

Accessible Course Design, Alternate Format, Artificial Intelligence, Assistive Technology, Captioning/Transcription, Faculty Development & Support, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Braden Watkins

I am a cofounder at a11 accessibility, a company that automatically makes pdfs and videos accessible. I am from Mesa AZ. I used to work for BYU's accessibility team that handled video, pdf, and LMS content.

Rex Okland

Rex is a co-founder at a11 accessibility from Mesa, AZ. He specializes in PDF remediation and automated ai workflows.

Owen Wayment

Owen is a co-founder at a11 accessibility. He is from Layton, Utah. He is a student at BYU studying accounting, and loves improving accessibility workflows.