Ever wonder if Heretto can handle your specific type of Hazard Statements? Our product is created to streamline the documentation process for a variety of industries.
Many highly-regulated industries use Heretto to create manuals and documents for their products. One of the benefits of using Heretto is the ability to control the authoring and review process to make it compliant with certain safety regulations.
One of those safety standards is ANSI Hazard Statements.
What is ANSI Compliant?
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) developed a standard to ensure communications about hazardous situations can be unified and cohesive. This is to help individuals working with potentially hazardous materials and situations quickly and easily understand information.
Manufacturers in the U.S.A. must ensure that all materials and manuals are Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and ANSI-compliant, or they could face repercussions.
There are four types of Hazard Statements:
- Danger
- Warning
- Caution
- Notice
Each one has predetermined use cases and requirements. All four types of statements can be found in Heretto.
Notes VS Hazard Statements In DITA ANSI Compliance
When creating a notice in Heretto, you have the option to use Notes or Hazard Statements elements. When deciding whether to use Notes versus Hazard Statements for warnings in your document, it’s important to understand the differences between the two. While they have similar functions, there are some key distinctions.
Notes are used to call attention to a piece of information in a document. Notes are not compliant with ANSI. Both can be included in any topic type and you can change the type attribute.
Hazard Statements are used to inform readers about potential hazards, consequences, avoidance, and strategies. They’re more specialized and are a more complex structure than a Note. Authors can add icons and style them in a specific way.
Making Hazard Statements ANSI Compliant
Hazard Statements in Heretto have the full potential to be ANSI compliant. In fact, this is one of the use cases where Heretto really shines.
DITA Hazard Statements are based on ANSI regulations, however, whether or not they are compliant depends on how the author formats the output regarding colors, fonts, icons, and messages.
Here’s an example of how to create a typical Hazard Statement:
<hazardstatement type="danger">
<messagepanel>
<typeofhazard>Type of Hazard element - description of the type of hazard.</typeofhazard>
<consequence>Consequences</consequence>
<howtoavoid>How to avoid element - how the user can avoid it.</howtoavoid>
</messagepanel>
<hazardsymbol href="Bio-hazard-symbol.jpg" width="50px"/>
</hazardstatement>
Heretto makes creating these elements easy since authors have complete control over the styling of the elements.
Learn More
If you’re interested in learning more about creating ANSI-compliant Hazard Statements, check out the ANSI website. If you want to learn more about creating OSHA-compliant documents, check out the OSHA website.
There you can find more information about the correct way to style things like:
- Color standards
- Safety symbols
- Safety signs
- Safety charts
When you use this information and the Heretto formatting, you’ll be able to create OSHA and ANSI-compliant Hazard Statements easily.
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