In this lesson you
- Started the machine pass with one click
- Read the receipt: what it fixed on its own
- Found the draft waiting for a person
Transcript
What a machine can fix
The automatic pass. Some accessibility problems have one right answer. Others need someone who understands the document. Proof's automatic pass takes the first kind off your hands, so your time goes on the second. This lesson shows what the pass does, how to read what it reports, and where it leaves the rest for you.
Before the pass
Here's a notice called Summer Play Days at Riverside Park. It's already tagged, so a screen reader can tell its headings from its paragraphs. But three things a machine can decide are missing. It has no title, so a screen reader announces the file name instead. Its language isn't set, so a screen reader may read it in the wrong voice. And it has no tab order, so the keyboard may move through the page out of sequence. The steps along the top of the panel split the work by who does it. Auto is the machine's step. The number on each step counts the work waiting there, and red means something to fix. The Auto step's three are these three gaps. The notice also has a photo that nobody has described yet. That's a different kind of problem, and we'll come back to it.
One click
To hand the machine's share of the work to Proof, stay on the Auto step and choose Remediate this document. Nothing in your document changes until you do. A window says what the pass will do on this document. It applies every fix it can make on its own. Then it drafts alt text, a description of the photo, for you to confirm. Proof never puts a draft into your document by itself. A person always decides. You don't have to wait for it. Choose Leave it running, and the work carries on even if you close the tab. Which kinds of work the pass may do, such as drafting with AI, is your organization's automation policy. That has its own lesson.
The receipt
When the pass finishes, the Auto step shows a receipt. It answers two questions. What did the machine fix, and what couldn't it? The heading names the new version the pass saved. Proof doesn't overwrite your file. Each pass is a new version. The summary beside it reads three fixed, one could not fix. Under Fixed, each green tag is one check the pass now clears. Here they're Title, Primary language, and Tab order, the three gaps from before. Under Could not fix, each row is a failed check the pass reached but couldn't settle. Here there's one, Figures alternate text. That's the photo's missing description. This isn't the machine falling short. Only a person can say what a photo shows, and why it's on the page.
Left for a person
So where does the rest of the work go? Each row ends with the step that will finish it. For the photo, that's Pictures and tables, the step labelled Objects along the top. Select the row, and it takes you straight there. Checks that only a person can judge, such as reading order, never appear on this list. They were never the machine's to fix, so they wait on their own steps from the start. On the Objects step, Proof's drafted description waits beside the photo. A person reads it against the picture, then uses it, edits it, or writes their own. Describing pictures has its own lesson. Now you can run the automatic pass on a document, read what it fixed, and follow each thing it left to the step where a person finishes it. To run it across many documents at once, see Remediating in bulk.
Recap
That's the end of this lesson.
Maple Ridge Community Health, its documents and its people are fictional, made for these lessons.