Adobe Acrobat – Guidelines for Accessible PDFs

A PDF allows limited editing of the document once it is created and maintains the predefined layout of text and images. Most PDF documents are created via Microsoft Word and then exported to Adobe acrobat.

Converting to PDF:

From Word:

• follow the accessibility guidelines for Word documents.
• Convert using Adobe Professional to ensure accessibility features are maintained.

From a scanned a document:

• ensure you use optical character recognition software (OCR)

When using a graphic designer for a publication:

• raise the College accessibility policy as applied to PDFs with the designer.

For more on these areas see creating a PDF document.

Building accessibility within PDFs:

• tag the PDF layout correctly
• define headings
• give Alt text to images.

For more see building an accessible PDF document

Checking accessibility in existing PDFs:

• run the document through Accessibility Checker,

For more see Checking Accessibility in Existing PDF's

Video Tutorial on PDF Accessibility

This is a general overview of how to create accessible PDFs and how to check and edit existing PDFs for accessibility (length 5m 13s).