Overview

On this page, you will explore how to determine if PDFs are accessible and how to create accessible PDFs.

You have a choice as to how to engage with the material in this lesson. Remember, the key concepts are always addressed in the text. If you need more info or learn by watching, the videos and resources are great supplements.

Read About It
Watch a Demo / Video
Explore Resources on the Web

Read: Types of PDFs

Scanned PDFs

PDFs that are made by scanning a document with an office copier are not accessible unless you take a few extra steps beyond scanning. A scanned PDF is a picture of text. As such, a screen reader is not going to be able to read the text and the text in the image is much too long to enter as alt text.

OCR - Optical Character Recognition

In order to make a scanned PDF accessible, the first step is to use OCR to convert the image into text.

To see if a PDF has already been converted and is readable by a screen reader, try to use your mouse to highlight the text. If you can highlight pieces of text, OCR has been used. If you cannot highlight lines of text, then you are looking at an image.

To test the accuracy of the OCR conversion, copy and paste the highlighted text into a document and check to see if the text/characters were accurately converted.

There are now a variety of apps and software that you can use to convert a scanned PDF to text. Once you convert the text, be sure to go through it and fix any errors that came through in the conversion.

Tagged PDFs

Once a PDF has been converted, the next task is to add tags. Tags allow the author to identify headings, alt text, lists, etc. They essentially give the document structure and allow the reader to more easily navigate the document.

To determine whether a particular PDF is tagged, open it in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader and go to Document Properties (Ctrl + D in Windows; Command + D in Mac OS X). In the lower left corner of the Document Properties dialog, “Tagged” is either “Yes” or “No.” (Choosing and Using Accessible Textbooks" by Terrill Thompson from Open Washington, SBCTC, CC BY 4.0)

To add tags to a PDF, you will need to use Adobe Acrobat Pro. Review these instructions for Fixing Inaccessible PDFs Using Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Converting to PDF from Word

The easiest and best way to create an accessible PDF is to use MS Word. If you format your document following the accessibility standards and practices discussed previously in Creating Accessible Word Documents, your PDF will be off to a good start.

The following resource gives step by step instructions based on the version of Word you are using: WebAIM Converting Documents to PDF.

One last note...

Many people opt to use PDF because it saves the formatting of their document. One thing I'd like all of you to keep in mind: format follows function. You want to prioritize students' ability to access and use the document over the look of the document. If you're saving documents as PDF files to simply maintain formatting, I suggest you stop and give students a .doc version instead. From my own experience, many folks have said that avoiding PDFs entirely is often the best approach to ensuring PDF accessibility.

Watch: Creating, Converting, and Checking PDFs

Creating Accessible Microsoft Word 2010 Documents: Converting Word 2010 to PDF (10 min)

This video will review making an accessible Word document and how to convert the document to PDF.

Creating Accessible Microsoft Word 2010 Documents

Creating Accessible PDF Documents in Acrobat XI (5 min)

A 5 minute overview of creating accessible PDFs in Adobe Acrobat.

Creating Accessible PDF Documents

Explore: PDF Resources on the Web

Colorado State University: Adobe PDF Universally Designed - A thorough lesson on evaluating a PDF for accessibility and creating an accessible PDF from Word.
Fixing Inaccessible PDFs Using Adobe Acrobat Pro - A fairly straightforward lesson on fixing PDFs if you're already familiar with Acrobat Pro.
WebAIM: PDF Accessibility - This is a good lesson on preparing documents for conversion to PDF. It covers the steps to follow in three different versions of MS Word (2000-2003, 2007, and 2010).
PDF Accessibility - An optional module in this training that goes over how to evaluate PDFs for accessibility and how to fix inaccessible PDFs.