by Randy Hollowell, IT Services

We hear all the time how important good communication is, and there are lots of ways to improve how we communicate. One important aspect of good communication is making our content accessible to all audiences. That’s where CARES can help.

Conversion and Remediation Express Services (CARES) is a self-service solution for students, faculty, and staff that automates the conversion of documents into a wide-range of alternative formats including MP3, EPUB, HTML and digital Braille.

This service can also be used to convert documents such as image-only PDF files or scanned images into formats that are more useful for you, and easier to work with.

“The CARES tool is a great starting point for remediating documents,” notes Autumn Meade, an accessible technology coordinator at the AccessMU Center. “At AccessMU we receive image-only PDFs frequently, and the first step in remediating these files is to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) the document. CARES can handle this step for you in just a few seconds.”

It is very important to note that the quality of the conversion results depends upon the quality and formatting of the original document. Results are best for documents that are primarily text. Documents less suited for conversion are those with non-textual content, such as scanned images of STEM content, complex mathematical equations, and graphs.

To begin using the CARES tool yourself, visit MiamiOH.edu/cares to get started. Logging in using your Miami University UniqueID and password is required to access CARES.

Guidelines and best practices for using CARES are available through Miami’s Knowledge Base, and the AccessMU Center also provides wonderful resources and information regarding document accessibility on its website. Please reach out to them if you have any questions, or desire additional information at AccessMU@MiamiOH.edu or 513-529-0200.