Dr Faezeh Seyedarabi & Rocio Calvo Digital Accessibility in Higher and Further Education Conference – 7 th April 2016 Making Accessible PDF documents in Virtual Environments: PDF guidelines for UK lectures in Higher Education

The design and development of teaching slides is a requirement for lectures in Higher Education (HE) Teaching slides are often shared with students in PDF formats instead of Word or Excel documents Moodle an example of Virtual Learning Environment

PDF are used in Virtual environments and should be made accessible to all users. According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), there are different disabilities and barriers that could affect students’ individual learning, when using web or digital documents It is essential for teachers to develop digital documents that are accessible to all students regardless of their learning abilities, e.g. Moodle. Use of PDF documents in Virtual Learning Environments

4 1. How to create an accessible content? 2. How to tag content? 3. How to create accessible PDF documents? Making Accessible PDF documents in Virtual Environments

Example slide

Example slide – Some accessible information is considered

Dr Faezeh Seyedarabi & Rocio Calvo Digital Accessibility in Higher and Further Education Conference – 7 th April 2016 E.g. Making Accessible PDF documents in Virtual Environments: PDF guidelines for UK lectures in Higher Education

What do I have to do?

Make your original documents accessible

Write for your target audience Don’t make long paragraphs Use headings to divide information Use bullet points to break up text Use active voice Avoid multiple negatives How do I make them accessible?: Pay attention to your content information (I)

Include graphics when possible: Avoid graphic of text Do not use colours to represent information Provide alternative text for this images Understandable when using black and white How do I make them accessible?: Pay attention to your content information (II)

How do I make them accessible?: Pay attention to your content information (III)

Tag headings Tag lists (Numbered and bullet points) Do not use spaces to modify the layout Identify document language How do I make them accessible?: Tag the content

Include structure tags for accessibility Document properties Bookmarks using headings … Convert to PDF Your documents

AbilityNet Producing accessible materials for print and online Creating accessible Word documents WebAIM. Microsoft Word documents W3C PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 Gov UK. Creating accessible PDFs WebAIM. PDF Accessibility Next Steps