The MAXIMUS Centre for Literacy helps government and large health insurance companies communicate, and engage with citizens and communities. As communication experts, they are dedicated to assisting consumers in understanding, and acting upon health information to make informed decisions. The Centre is a key service of a global organization, with headquarters in Virginia, and over 18,000 employees.

Challenge

The MAXIMUS Centre proactively ensures that documents and websites are accessible and usable for their worldwide customers. It strives for accuracy and consistency, ensuring that content, publications, and forms are easy-toread and understood by everyone. As Creative Director, Eva Anderson leads a team of designers in producing digital and printed content, including documents ranging from simple PDFs to very detailed forms. Faced with increased customer demand for accessible documents, they needed to scale up remediation capacity, while maintaining quality and accuracy standards. While her design team could remediate certain types of documents, they had difficulty handling more complex documents.

Solution

MAXIMUS balanced the need for upgraded skillsets, with budget and staffing considerations, to achieve increased document remediation targets. Ms. Anderson considered several options. “At first, we hired a consultant to teach us how to set up our files correctly both in design and MS Word, how to use Acrobat Pro and the Accessibility Checker. We also considered training team members to a higher level on document remediation but we could not justify putting one person on document remediation full time. And it didn’t make sense for our graphic designers to be doing it either”, she recalled.

Eventually, they decided to contract out to CommonLook for remediation services. Ms. Anderson remembers the key factors that led to their outsourcing decision. “CommonLook was able to remediate the PDF’s to a higher level of accuracy and had additional features that Acrobat Checker just couldn’t give us. And they could provide us with a guarantee on the quality of their work. We felt that that was really important for us to be able to provide to our clients.”

Results

Today, the MAXIMUS Centre continues to rely on CommonLook for PDF remediation services, particularly when complex documents are involved. Ms. Anderson is impressed by how cost effective it is to outsource. “We made the decision to go to CommonLook because there is just no way we can match their per page rate. It’s easily two to three times more costly for us to remediate the documents than going with CommonLook.”

She’s also impressed with the service levels. “It’s just nice to know that we have a knowledgeable, friendly, very service oriented, highly professional resource on which we can rely on to produce exceptional products for our clients.”

With health related documents, accuracy is vital. Ms. Anderson concluded with a comment on CommonLook’s record of accuracy. “I can say from my perspective that CommonLook has a very high accuracy rate because I do take the time to check the documents. And on the rare occasion where something needed attention, they responded immediately.”

Tallying the Benefits

  • Outsourced remediation generated significant cost savings, while cutting staff time.
  • Client document production was scaled up, while quality and accuracy was maintained.
  • Freed up valuable time for designers, allowing them to focus on other customer requirements.
  • Consistent PDF remediation quality and service helped improve satisfaction.
  • Fast access to flexible services strengthened their production capacity.

It’s just nice to know that we have a knowledgeable, friendly, very service oriented, highly professional resource on which we can rely on to produce exceptional products for our clients.

 

Eva Anderson, Creative Director

MAXIMUS Centre for Literacy
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