PDF Accessibility

This page is built as a companion to the Document Remediation Part 2 – PDF Accessibility training course. These steps are also designed primarily for Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. The overall list of steps could be translated for use with other apps as the concepts are mostly the same from application to application.

Checklist For Basic PDF Remediation

1. Creation – Correct for accessibility at the document source. For Word documents, use Microsoft Word Checklist.
2. Real Text – Is the text of the document selectable, and reflowable? Not a poorly scanned, faxed, or graphic document without Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
3. Accessibility Checker – resolve any easy issues
   • Title of Document
   • Manual checks like color contrast and reading order
   • Alt Text on all images
4. Tags – Is the document Tagged?
5. Tags – Are all tags correct?
6. Reading Order – Are tags in the correct reading order?
7. Figures – Do all non-decorative figures (images) have correct Alt-Text?
8. Figures – Have all decorative figures been Artifacted?
9. Tables – Do all tables have table headers <TH> with proper span and scope?
10. Navigation – Are there bookmarks in the PDF for documents longer than a few pages?
11. Navigation – Is there a table of contents (TOC) and is it hyperlinked?
12. Navigation – Are all hyperlinks correct?
13. Document Properties
    • Title
    • Subject/Description (200 characters)
    • Author
    • Initial View set to automatically open Bookmarks, and Show Document Title is selected.
    • Advanced – Language of document

PDF Remediation Resources

• W3C’s PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0
• Adobe’s PDF Accessibility Documentation
• Section 508’s accessibility requirements for PDFs
• InDesign Accessibility​
• Creating Accessible PDFs (InDesign to Acrobat Pro DC)​
• Tips for InDesign Accessibility

3rd Party PDF Remediation Apps

• Equidox​
  • PDF Remediation Software, Professional PDF Remediation​
  • DAO has some licenses for the software​. Email us to find out more!
• CommonLook​
  • PDF Remediation Software, Professional PDF Remediation​
• Foxit​
  • PDF Remediation Software​
• ABBYY FineReader​
  • OCR Remediation Tool