We recently had the pleasure of working with Inter-American Foundation on their 2023 Year in Review. We designed the full 12-page report, as well as updating it with translated Spanish text. One of the important aspects of the project was the importance of accessibility, especially making sure it is 508 compliant, which are a set of requirements for information and communication technology (ICT) to ensure that covered ICT is accessible to, and usable by, individuals with disabilities.

Being primarily a print designer, accessibility is not something I was aware of until very recently. We created a brochure for the National Museum for Women in the Arts and something important to them was ensuring the digital PDFs we create are as accessible as possible. Initially, I thought this meant placing text in the metadata of the photos so screen readers had something to look for when describing images. As I’ve learned with the most recent brochure we designed, it is much more involved.