Accessible PDF Documents

Accessible PDF 1
ACCESSIBLE PDF DOCUMENTS
1. Adobe provides a good document: Creating Accessible PDF

Documents with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 A Guide for Publishing PDF
Documents for Use by People with Disabilities -
http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/pdfs/acro7_pg_u
e.pdf
2. Accessible PDF documents -

http://www.tsbvi.edu/technology/pdf.htm
Types of documents with accessibility problems are those that -
• contain only scanned images of pages

• are not "tagged" because they were developed using an older version of
Acrobat
• do not contain "alt" text for images, text links, or image links.
Most people do not create PDF documents in Acrobat, they use Microsoft Word.
• Use Styles to define structure - heading, list, columns, etc.

• Don't rely on color alone to convey information---combine color with other
format such as bold or underline.
• Choose Format>Column to create columns
• Use Acrobat to add "alt" text to include URL for text links that don't make
sense - click here
• provide "alt" text for images
o click on image
o right click
o choose Format Picture
o choose Web tab
o enter "alt" text
• Convert to PDF settings
o Add Bookmarks
o Add Links
o Enable Accessibility and Reflow with Tagged PDF (critical)
o Security Tab- Enable text access for Screen Reader Devices...
o Bookmarks Tab - select level of bookmarks and style.
Accessible PDF document may/should contain the following
• logical reading order (tagged by creator)

• "alt" text for images and links
• bookmarks
Accessible PDF 2
• table of contents for navigation

• natural language identification
3. Section One: Accessibility, Adobe PDF documents, and

Adobe Reader -
http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/reader/index.html
4. The main Accessibility website for Adobe -

http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/index.html
What makes an Adobe PDF document accessible?
Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) is a standard on the World Wide Web
and is also used to distribute electronic documents over corporate networks, by
e-mail, and on digital media. All accessible Adobe PDF documents have the
following five characteristics.
Topics discussed in this section:
What is accessibility?
What makes an Adobe PDF document accessible?
A logical structure and reading order

Alternate text descriptions for figures, form fields, and links
Navigational aids
Security that doesn't interfere with assistive technology
Fonts that allow characters to be extracted to text
Some Adobe PDF documents may be inaccessible
How to determine if an Adobe PDF document is accessible
Accessibility features in Adobe Reader 7.0
Adobe Reader has the following accessibility features:

Accessible PDF 3
• The Accessibility Setup Assistant, a wizard for setting up almost all accessibility
preferences at once based on your particular assistive technology. See "Running
the Accessibility Setup Assistant".
• Support for assistive technology, such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, and
the accessibility features of the Windows and Mac OS operating systems.
• Read Out Loud, a built-in text-to-speech tool that you can use if you do not have
access to a screen reader. See "Using the Read Out Loud tool".
• Reflow view, so you can read multicolumn layouts as one column of text. Reflow
view is useful when you do not have a screen magnifier, or when you are using a
PDA. See "Using Reflow view for easy, single-column reading".
• Auto-scrolling through documents, to reduce required keyboard actions. See
"Using automatic scrolling".
• The option to save a PDF document to text for Braille or other output. See
"Saving an Adobe PDF document as text".
• Numerous preferences to control how screen readers and the Read Out Loud
tool read PDF documents. See "Section 4: Customizing Adobe Reader for your
accessibility needs".
• The ability to customize color contrast to make text and images easier to view.
See "Setting color contrast for improved readability".
• Keyboard alternatives to most mouse actions for navigating PDF documents.
See "Navigating the Adobe Reader interface by using the keyboard".
5. PDF Accessibility -
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/
There are two approaches to making PDF content accessible:
1. Approach #1: Provide an alternative HTML version of PDF

file (either instead of or in addition to the PDF file).
2. Approach #2: Make the PDF file natively accessible, by
created a tagged PDF file with all of the appropriate
accessible markup.
If an HTML equivalent is more accessible than a PDF, it may be more

appropriate to eliminate the PDF files altogether and concentrate instead on
making the content accessible in an HTML format. This isn't always an option,
but in many cases it is worth considering.
Creating accessible tagged PDF files will make PDF files accessible to standard
screen readers which support tagged PDF (like JAWS and Window Eyes). This
circumvents the need for end users to learn how to use Adobe's embedded
speech synthesizer. It is not always easy to make PDF files that are directly
accessible to screen readers. Documents with complex layouts can be
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to convert into an accessible PDF file, due to
the fact that the content does not linearize correctly. It can also be very
Accessible PDF 4
challenging to make documents with extensive charts or with embedded videos

accessible.
6. PPT - Creating Accessible PDF Documents with Adobe

Acrobat 7.0 by Sean Keegan
http://www.htctu.fhda.edu/publications/conferences/csun2005/st
art.html
This is a link takes you to a page that offers an accessible version of PowerPoint.
The tool that was used on this is Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for
Office which can be found at: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/office/
7. When Creating Accessible PDF Documents from MS Word:

http://info.umuc.edu/de/ezine/how_to/accessibility/pdf-from-
word.htm
This page gives step-by-step visual instructions on how to make a MS Word

document accessible to convert to an accessible PDF.
8. Other resources:
http://www.cew.wisc.edu/accessibility/tutorials/accessPDF.htm#
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ACCESSIBLE PDF DOCUMENTS

1. Adobe provides a good document: Creating Accessible PDF

2. Accessible PDF documents -

Types of documents with accessibility problems are those that -

• contain only scanned images of pages

• Use Styles to define structure - heading, list, columns, etc.

Accessible PDF document may/should contain the following

• logical reading order (tagged by creator)

• table of contents for navigation

3. Section One: Accessibility, Adobe PDF documents, and

4. The main Accessibility website for Adobe -

What makes an Adobe PDF document accessible?

Topics discussed in this section:

What makes an Adobe PDF document accessible?

A logical structure and reading order

Some Adobe PDF documents may be inaccessible

How to determine if an Adobe PDF document is accessible

Accessibility features in Adobe Reader 7.0

Adobe Reader has the following accessibility features:

There are two approaches to making PDF content accessible:

1. Approach #1: Provide an alternative HTML version of PDF

If an HTML equivalent is more accessible than a PDF, it may be more

challenging to make documents with extensive charts or with embedded videos

6. PPT - Creating Accessible PDF Documents with Adobe

7. When Creating Accessible PDF Documents from MS Word:

This page gives step-by-step visual instructions on how to make a MS Word

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