PDFs are more and more becoming the standard document structure used to disseminate documents.\u00a0 In the creation of PDFs, it is important to consider accessibility.<\/p>\n
How to go about creating accessible PDFs will depend on where you are starting: with a finished PDF you want to make accessible, if you have access to a document you want to convert to PDF, or if you are scanning and converting to PDF. Each process is more involved that I’ll write about here, plenty of information is available online on creating documents accessibly in each of these instances.<\/p>\n
While not as common today, many PDFs still exist that are just scanned images of text, not actual text.\u00a0 These documents are inaccessible from the start.\u00a0 If you scan documents to make PDFs, or want to work on the quality of your documents, you should educate yourself on the benefits of OCR (optical character recognition) software. In Disability Access Services, we use ABBYY Fine Reader, but many different versions of OCR software exist – some might even be bundled with your scanner.<\/p>\n
Here are a few really good resources about accessible PDF creation: I really like the \u201cCreating Accessible PDF Files from Word\u201d document on the following page, as many of us convert to PDF from Word: Some of the basics to consider are:<\/p>\n Note that this is a fairly through, but not complete list.\u00a0 Human evaluation is always<\/span> the most important tool you have. You’ll need to education yourself and evaluate the document to determine if it is accessible. While Acrobat Pro now has a built in accessibility checker, and it helps quite a lot, no software exists that can replace a person actually checking a document and all of the intricacies we build into them.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have Acrobat Pro 9 (or X) you\u2019ll need it at a minimum to do a lot of the fixes I’ve listed above once the document is in PDF.\u00a0 You can, and should, do this work in your original document if you own it, as it’s always better to build in accessibility from the beginning.<\/p>\n While most of you don’t have access to the most common screen reader software on the market, Adobe actually has built in screen reader software into Adobe Reader and Acrobat Pro!\u00a0 One of the best things you can do to make sure your PDF document is accessible is to listen to it.\u00a0 Activate this feature by going to View > Read Out Loud > Activate Read Out Loud.\u00a0 Then use the controls and listen away.<\/p>\n To learn more, watch a webinar on accessible communication through IT<\/a> that I gave recently, with an emphasis on document creation.<\/p>\n Gabe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PDFs are more and more becoming the standard document structure used to disseminate documents. In the creation of PDFs, it is important to consider accessibility. Continue reading
\n<\/a>WebAIM PDF Accessibility<\/a>
\nAdobe Accessibility<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAdobe Accessibility Best Practices<\/a><\/p>\n\n