Creating Accessible PDFs

It’s Happening Here

Agenda Creating Accessible PDF files –Is that PDF REALLY necessary? –Did you SCAN that? Using the OCR feature to “make text” from your scanned image –How can I tell if my PDF is accessible? Testing your PDF –Making it accessible Adding accessibility tags and other elements

Is that PDF REALLY necessary?

Why does it have to be a PDF? WHY do you use a PDF file? –Forms? –To display a document exactly as the author intends? –Because PDFs are considered accessible and you don’t want to change it into an accessible html file? –Think again! PDFs are NOT accessible unless you make them accessible. –Look at both sides and decide what works.

Did you SCAN that?

Searchable PDF files PDF files must be searchable to be accessible. Browse to URL: – –Adobe Acrobat 8 should automatically open. If not, save the PDF to your desktop then open the file in Acrobat –Click Search (binoculars) – search for “PDF” What are the results? ZERO? Well, PDF is all over this thing!

Recognizing Text Using the OCR tool to recognize text –Select Document | Recognize Text Using OCR –Click Start –Click OK

Repeat the search for “PDF” How many instances does it find this time? Only one? “PDF” is all over this document! I thought it was going to recognize the characters! In many cases it will recognize your text document, but not all. –It depends highly upon the original scanner settings. –It is best to work from the original text file. –Close the file, we’ll open another in the next step.

A searchable PDF file Browse to URL: – –Adobe Acrobat 8 should automatically open. If not, save the PDF to your desktop then open the file in Acrobat –Click Search (binoculars) – search for “PDF” –What are the results? Well, “PDF” IS all over this thing! –29 times to be exact –Keep this file open, we’ll work on it some more

Is it an accessible PDF?

Test the PDF file

Results – SCARY!

What does it mean? You mean I can’t use my PDF because it’s not accessible? Don’t let the messages scare you. The Accessibility Report Panel actually helps you find a way to fix the issues on your document.

Making it Accessible

Accessibility Report Panel

Resolving issues

Touch Up Reading Order Tool

Right click to add alt text

Defining Headers

Tagged Items

Show Order Panel

Anomalies

All of the text in this document lacks a language specification. Specify Language

It’s not that complicated Creating an accessible PDF file is not that complicated. It can be tedious and time consuming but, the more you do it, the better you get. Remember to SAVE often while you work on creating accessible PDF files

Didn’t get enough? Links to Adobe site/tutorials: Accessibility in Acrobat 8 Runtime: 8 minutes Accessibility in Acrobat 8 Assessing accessibility in Existing PDFs Runtime: 6 minutesAssessing accessibility in Existing PDFs Creating Accessible PDFs Runtime: 15 minutesCreating Accessible PDFs

Thank You