Full course description
This is an intermediate level course which introduces editors and web masters to some techniques for testing PDFs for accessibility, repairing simple PDF files and generating accessible tagged PDFs from Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign.
This module differs from some other modules in the Accessibility Learning Path in that not every scenario of remediating a PDF file is covered. That's because PDFs can be created by almost any software package that has a print function making the output extremely variable and inconsistent.
The goal of this course is not to ensure that all PDFs are "accessible," but to help units evaluate workflows for providing information that may currently reside within a PDF to all users. In some cases, the result might be an accessible tagged PDF. In other cases, the solution might be migrating the content to another format or perhaps a combination of a PDF paired with another digital format.
Course Objectives
At the end of this course, learners should be able to:
- Define terms relating to PDF accessibility.
- List a few challenges of making a PDF accessible.
- Explain the general process for testing PDF accessibility.
- Explore common repair strategies for enhancing PDF accessibility such as a tagged PDF or Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
- Discuss limitations of repair tools found in software such as Adobe Acrobat and others (ex. color issues and working with equations)
- Identify strategies to troubleshoot common challenges.
Suggested Prerequisites
If you want a review of accessibility concepts, we recommend the following courses in the Accessibility Learning Path.
- Introduction to Accessibility
- Microsoft Word Accessibility Basics
Note: An MS Word file that is created accessibly can be converted to a tagged accessible PDF file. - PowerPoint Accessibility Basics (color, potential reading order issues)