PDF Files

Creating Accessible PDFs

This section will cover both, creating a PDF from scratch, as well as converting an existing PDF (non image based) into a more accessible format. Adobe Acrobat Professional is required to complete these tasks.

Fonts

Fonts will follow the same guidelines as the HTML font guidelines; sans-serif, scalable, etc.

Tags

Tags similar to those in HTML code can included within a PDF document to make it more accessible to things such as Screen Readers.

Accessible Tables

Step by step walk-through of using Adobe Acrobat Pro to do this.

Just as tables in HTML include tags such as th, td, and others, a PDF document can, and should, include these tags as well.

Creating PDF From Word

The first thing that you should do when turning Word documents into PDF documents is start with a fully accessible Word document. Follow the guidelines in creating an accessible Word document and many of the things such as the style elements (headings, font, etc.) will carry over to the PDF version. In addition to just converting the document through MS Word, you will have to add tags to elements such as tables using Adobe Acrobat Professional and check other tags to be sure they comply with the guidelines and methods discussed in section 2.2.1 (Creating Accessible PDFs).

Creating Accessible PDF Documents from Scans (Image Based PDFs)

Scan pages from a book to Accessible PDF (will likely consolidate this with the following section)

Start by scanning the pages into a PDF document then follow the instructions in the following Section.

Convert Already Scanned Pages from a Book to Accessible PDF

In the case that I am completing this task, the instructor scanned the pages of a book into a PDF file so that the PDF was made up of images of text that was at an accessibility level of zero.

Process:

1. Scan Pages of a book into a PDF (this is often the PDF posted for readings in class)
2. Run That PDF through Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended and its Character recognition tool.
3. Copy Text from converted PDF and Paste into a Text Editor (I used MS Word)
4. Correct any errors from image to text conversion and edit to be accessible using the guidelines and methods discussed in section 2.2.1 (Creating Accessible PDFs)

Issues Encountered:

• Adobe Acrobat produced more recognition errors when converting text that was italicized as apposed to non italicized text
• Specific letters and combinations of letters were incorrectly converted.