eAccessibility Academy Documents, PDFs and Prentations

PDF

Converting PDFs

PDFs are a convenient way to preserve formatting and accessibility information, assuming the file is converted and accessibility is reviewed correctly from Word. Many users may access PDFs through Adobe Acrobat, though, not all PDFs are created in Acrobat.

Things to remember when converting Word to PDF:

The Word file must be accessible. This includes structured headings, alternative text for images, descriptive links, etc.
The PDF must be exported for web and not print use to preserve accessibility tags.
When saving or exporting to a PDF, you must select enable accessibility in the Preferences or Application Settings options depending on your Word subscription. This will ensure the accessibility features created in Word successfully export to the PDF.
You can check the successful transfer by selecting Accessibility under the Tools option.

Tables, Forms, and Reading Order

Sighted users can make associations between headings, rows, columns, and other data. However, these entries are difficult if not impossible for accessibility users. Adobe Acrobat has a number of functions to identify the reading order of these entries under Accessibility in Tools.

Adobe also has an extensive tutorial for how to list the reading order: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/touch-reading-order-tool-pdfs.html