We often get asked about by clients, so I thought I’d also share some thoughts on this matter in this blog post.
Accessible PDFs
PDF files have always been embedded in web pages and that’s not likely to change in the near future. The real challenge here is making sure that the information in the PDF can be accessed by all users, as screen reader and screen magnifier users have traditionally had problems with PDFs. However, screen readers can now read aloud PDF files and they can be magnified by screen magnifiers.
Creating a new PDF
Firstly, you’ll need to make your Word document accessible through the following steps:
- Properly label headings and ensure they’re correctly nested
- Assign alternative text to images
- Follow best practice writing for the web
To create the PDF you then need to select the toolbar icon:
The alternative way of creating PDFs, that is, printing to Adobe PDF should not be used. This latter method does not tag the PDF document, meaning that all heading information is lost.
After the PDF has been created, you must then check that the document is properly tagged and bookmarked.
Converting existing PDFs
With Acrobat Writer, it’s possible to modify an existing PDF through the following steps:
- Add new tag
- View, Re-order, Rename, Modify, Delete or Create tags
- Update the reading order
- Add alternative text to images
- Convert a scanned PDF with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
We will follow this post up with a more substantial article in the next couple of months, but let us know in the meantime what your thoughts are on the accessibility of PDFs.
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Alan commented on 3 March 2010 at 3:03 pm
Hi Brigitte,
Thank for the post.
I don’t have Adobe Acrobat. Can you recommend a good way for me to test PDF accessibility?
Thanks in advance!
Bob commented on 4 March 2010 at 5:04 pm
What about PDF that contain complex tables?
Dozza commented on 22 March 2010 at 7:14 pm
We have to supply a UK Government department with all our print design work for them (reports/brochures etc) as fully accessible tagged pdf’s and have been offering this service for over four years now. They have said that we are the only company they know of who can deliver them to the correct standard.
We invested a lot of time and research in learning how to do it properly and it was part of the reason we made the switch from Quark to InDesign (forget MS Word please!).
At the same time, we’ve not been able to find a definitive answer to the question of what level of accessibility tagged pdfs must comply to for UK Goverment websites. In Acrobat Pro Full Accessibility Check - you can select from ‘Adobe PDF’, W3C WCAG 1 or W3 WCAG 2 (April 2006 Draft), but no-one is sure of which level to achieve.
Do you have any knowledge on this one?
In reply to Alan, here’s a good post that discusses resources for checking pdfs for accessibility
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/801706/what-is-the-basic-level-of-accessibility-for-uk-local-government-web-site
As you can see, Gov departments commissioning the work don’t even know the requirements themselves.
Deborah commented on 5 April 2010 at 3:37 pm
Under Converting existing PDFs section, the first sentence begins “With Acrobat Writer”. I believe you mean “With Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Professional” - as far as I know, there is no version of Acrobat named “Acrobat Writer”.
In December 2008, I wrote “Ten Tips for Creating Usable and Accessible PDFs” that may be useful to your readers. Although written for Acrobat 8, the tips can be used for Acrobat 9 (though menu choices may have changed).
The article can be found at:
http://refresh-detroit.org/2008/12/02/ten-tips-for-creating-usable-and-accessible-pdfs/
Anna commented on 1 June 2010 at 9:40 pm
Until recently, the focus in content accessibility has tended to focus on HTML and XML. As a result, content managers often turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of PDF files sitting on their servers, downloaded every day… and 99% of them, hideously inaccessible, and utterly non-compliant with Section 508.
Anna commented on 7 June 2010 at 4:26 pm
Until recently, the focus in content accessibility has tended to focus on HTML and XML. As a result, content managers often turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of PDF files sitting on their servers, downloaded every day… and 99% of them, hideously inaccessible, and utterly non-compliant with Section 508..
Anna commented on 7 June 2010 at 4:26 pm
I often read your blog and always find it very interesting. Thought it was about time i let you know…Keep up the great work