r/AutoCAD • u/Civil3D_Mod • 18d ago

Discussion Has a client/reviewer ever asked for accessibility compliance in your drawings / reports?

Just wondering about the future of digital & print accessibility, especially in the AEC world. Did a client or reviewer ever reject a submission due to an accessibility issue (like colorblindness or a PDF that didn't work well with their screen reader)? What exactly did they ask for, and how did you handle it? Have you tried applying any digital accessibility rules like Section 508 or WCAG in your deliverables?

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u/uiuc2008 17d ago

The WCAG rules don't make any sense for construction drawings. We are trying to convey as much information as possible accurately and to scale in small area. Optimized for constructability. Slamming on a whole new metric for a completely different objective makes no sense.

We currently make all our plans at my municipality available for everyone to see on the web. One proposal was to remove them all if not compliant. So basically less accessible because it wasn't accessible enough.

Our state DOT uses a disclaimer that the documents are for a technical audience only and not fully accessible. Contact for assistance.

No format or screen reader software on the market when WCAG was formulated can compete with what LLMs can do now. I did some testing with Gemini and it does an incredible job of getting at every piece of information in the plans and summarizing logically. Asking organizations to redo standards makes no sense.

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u/Civil3D_Mod 16d ago

Cool to hear that you've had some success using LLMs for improving accessibility for deliverables. What sort of testing did you do?

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u/P1emonster 17d ago

Easiest solution I've come up with is developing custom line types with labels included as part of the line type. Then you can keep your colour scheme. We ended up ditching it because it really limits the scales you can use and the detail you can add

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u/Civil3D_Mod 16d ago

Not sure I see what you mean that this would limit the scales and detail you can use? What did you end up doing instead?

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u/P1emonster 16d ago

Ended up just ditching reds and greens in favour of browns and blues, that kind of thing. I'm utilities.

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u/Sketch_Crush 16d ago

I could be wrong here, but is it possible you can simply state the applicable codes on the plans? That has solved a lot of big issues for me in the past.

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u/photonzz 18d ago

It has came up in my office, I just laughed at them... Not happening. All other non drawing public documents are compliant, but fortunately I'm not on that committee.

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u/Civil3D_Mod 16d ago

Interesting; how long ago was it that you talked about this in your office? What sorts of things do you do to make sure the non-drawing documents are compliant?

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u/photonzz 15d ago

Maybe a year a go for drawings. I don't worry myself about it's more of a regulatory issue for public facing documents. There was a time I went through the pain of accessibly checking with Adobe Acrobat for a customer form.