Usability & Web Accessibility – PDFs & Documents

Posted by Yale University | Date Accessed: August 16, 2022

Before distributing and remediating PDFs, determine whether a PDF is necessary. PDFs can be challenging to remediate for accessibility. Whenever possible, share content as a webpage and use PDFs sparingly.

Resources and Training Slide Decks

• Introduction to Word Documents, PDFs, and PowerPoints training slides(link is external).
• Advanced PDF Training slides(link is external)

Tools

To create accessible PDFs and Documents, content editors should have the following software:

• Microsoft Office
• Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
• Adobe Creative Cloud (if creating PDFs from InDesign)

Faculty and Staff with NetIDs can download these programs from the Yale Software library(link is external).

PDFs

When addressing the PDF file itself, consider the following suggestions:

• Where possible, make your source document accessible before converting it to a PDF. Doing so will save considerable time and effort. See our accessibility resources for the following software:
  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Adobe InDesign
• Scanned pages or books are more difficult to make accessible than documents that are electronic natively. Where possible, avoid scans.
• If a scan is necessary, make the scan as clear as possible. Avoiding writing important information in the margin of the scan. Use your scanner’s optical character recognition (OCR) settings to facilitate making the scan readable to assistive technologies.
• Consider also providing the information in a web page or Word file, which some users may prefer.

To learn more about creating accessible PDFs, consult the following resources:

• Adobe Acrobat Accessibility (Adobe.com)(link is external)
• Create and Verify PDF Accessibility (Adobe.com)(link is external)
• Acrobat Training Resources for accessibility (Adobe.com)(link is external)
• LinkedIn Learning has two video courses about PDF accessibility:
  • Acrobat DC: Creating Accessible PDFs(link is external)
  • Advanced Accessible PDFs(link is external)

Microsoft Word

To make Word files accessible, consult the following resources:

• Make your Word documents accessible (from Office.com)(link is external)
• Word Accessibility (from WebAIM)(link is external)
• LinkedIn Learning has three courses that include information about Word:
  • Acrobat DC: Creating Accessible PDFs(link is external)
  • Advanced Accessible PDFs(link is external)
  • Creating Accessible Documents in Microsoft Office(link is external)

Microsoft PowerPoint

To make PowerPoint files more accessible, consult the following resources:

• Accessible Yale-branded PowerPoint Templates, light and dark backgrounds(link is external)
• Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible (from Office.com)(link is external)
• PowerPoint Accessibility (from WebAIM)(link is external)
• LinkedIn Learning has two courses that include information about PowerPoint:
  • AcrobatDC: Creating Accessible PDFs(link is external)
  • Creating Accessible Documents in Microsoft Office(link is external)
• Download Accessible Yale-branded PowerPoint Templates, light and dark backgrounds(link is external)

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign provides substantial support for creating accessible PDFs. To make your InDesign files accessible, consult the following resources:

• Adobe InDesign accessibility (Adobe.com)(link is external)
• Preparing InDesign Files for Accessibility (Adobe.com)(link is external)
• LinkedIn Learning has two PDF courses that include information about InDesign:
  • Acrobat DC: Creating Accessible PDFs(link is external)
  • Advanced Accessible PDFs(link is external)

Users can also refer to the Adobe InDesign Accessibility Guide which contains several predefined style profiles and instructions for implementation:

• Adobe InDesign Accessibility Guide (source .INDD)(link is external)
• Adobe InDesign Accessibility Guide (exported .PDF)

About This Article:

A Life Worth Living has copied the content of this article under fair use in order to preserve as a post in our resource library for preservation in accessible format.  Explicit permission pending.

Link to Original Article: https://usability.yale.edu/web-accessibility/articles/pdfs-documents