Student Loans Company

In early 2010, Frecosse were approached by the Student Loans Company with a unique problem.

They were keen to create interactive and accessible versions of their application forms, but as these were originated in Quark, there were no tools at the origination stage to achieve this, and exported PDF files were simply flattened renderings of their artwork.

Frecosse worked with these PDF files, and added all the feature by hand, which InDesign, an alternative page layout application would be able to generate automatically.

A key consideration of setting up these accessible forms was that once completed they would be scanned using Student Loan's internal form scanning machinery, and as such, certain compromises had to be made on best practice to ensure that the forms could be machine-read when returned.

Over the space of a couple of months, we produced the following accessible PDFs which were then uploaded to the Directgov website:

• Application for Education Maintenance Allowance 2009/10
• Application for Student Finance 2009/10
• Application for Student Finance (Continuing Students) 2009/10
• Benefits Confirmation Form 2009/10
• Change of Circumstances Form 2009/10
• Childcare Grant Application Form 2009/10
• Claim for reimbursement of costs through Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA) - 2009/10
• Disabled Students' Allowances Application Form - 2009/10 (Full Form)
• Disabled Students' Allowances Application Form - 2009/10 (Slimline Form)
• Ffurflen Gais am Lwfans Cynhaliaeth Addysg - 2009/10
• Financial Assessment Form - 2009/10
• Income Confirmation Form 2009/10
• Maintenance Loan Request Form 2009/10
• Self-Employment Earnings Confirmation Form 2009/10
• Tuition Fee Loan Request Form 2009/10
• UK Passport Details Form 2009/10

These accessible forms were noticed and reported on by the Royal National Institute for the Blind in their Insight Magazine, and were regarded as the Gold Standard in accessibility at that time.

Following successful delivery of these accessible forms, Frecosse prepared a step-by-step guide for producing future accessible PDFs originated from Quark, with a recommendation to invest in Adobe InDesign, as a better-suited application for the job.

Since 2010, the publishing team at Student Loans Company have now secured copies of InDesign, and training was successfully delivered by Scott Russell Publishing Services.