Overview

This page will introduce you to a few useful features in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC that will assist you when evaluating and remediating a PDF for accessibility.

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.

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Read: Acrobat Pro Features

PDFs & Accessibility

PDFs tend to cause a lot of anxiety when it comes to accessibility. The main reason is because PDFs are often created in order to prevent editing, thereby making them more difficult to fix if someone does not own the source document. Additionally, if a PDF is a scanned document, then it is an image of text and someone using assistive technology like a screen reader will be unable to access the text. So, the first rule of thumb when it comes to accessible PDFs is to avoid scanned documents.

Another issue that many people run into with PDFs is that they do not have the appropriate software to edit the PDF. Many people have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which allows them to view PDFs. In order to edit a PDF you will need Adobe Acrobat Pro. The following lessons will apply to Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC - An Overview

Acrobat DC is the newest version of Adobe Acrobat. It is the PDF editing software available through IT. Some of the lessons may apply to older versions, but the most recent version has improved their accessibility features, so it's recommended that you contact IT in case you need an upgrade.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably only used Adobe Acrobat to read PDFs, but not to edit or modify them. Before we dive into how to use Acrobat DC to evaluate and remediate PDFs, let’s go over a few of the features in Acrobat Pro DC so that you’re familiar with how to navigate the software.

Navigation panes will allow you to look at how the PDF has been formatted. You can navigate a document in a variety of ways depending on which navigation pane you have selected. To add the navigation panes to your viewing window, go to View > Show/Hide> Navigation and select Content, Order, Tags and Accessibility Check (or, once you have one open you can right click on the collapsed menu and select to display each). Content, Order, and Tags are the three navigation panes you’ll be using to evaluate and remediate PDFs.

screen cast showing how to open navigation panes in Acrobat DC.

Another feature to be aware of in Adobe Acrobat DC is the Accessibility Tool. The Tools pane may be collapsed when you first open a document in Acrobat. To access this tool, you can click on Tools from the document menu and scroll down to Accessibility (it’s near the bottom). This tool is what you will use to run an accessibility check on PDFs.

screen cast of opening Acrobat tools and selecting Accessibility

Creating a PDF

To create PDFs, it’s strongly recommended that you use a program like Microsoft Word. Word has many features which will allow you to create an accessible document that can be converted to PDF. Please review the Creating Accessible PDFs (an Intro) lesson for creating accessible PDFs using Word.

Watch: Acrobat DC Tour

Get to know the Acrobat DC Interface (4 mins)

A short overview of the Adobe Acrobat DC interface to help you get oriented with the program.

Get to know the Acrobat DC Interface

Jess's Adobe Acrobat DC Tour (4 mins)

A quick walkthrough of the features of Adobe Acrobat that will be discussed in the upcoming lessons.

Jess's Acrobat DC Tour

Explore: Adobe Acrobat Pro Guides