MSU Libraries’ Course Materials Program: Creating Accessible Course Materials Nicole Stevens Edge Digital Course Materials Coordinator

= PDF exists as image As inaccessible as print One of the most problematic PDFs, from the standpoint of accessibility, is the PDF that exists as an “image” of text- this is especially common for scanned documents. Not only is there no underlying text for a screen reader to grab on to, but pixel-based images often cannot be enlarged adequately for those with certain print related disabilities. I’m going to talk about our approach to recognizing and formatting the text in a static image, and how we turn it into an accessible PDFs primarily using Abbyy fine reader.

Accessible PDFs Vector-based text Easy to use with Screen Readers (tagging) Order/ flow is set Functional Tables Pages numbers that reflect adobe’s page numers Alt text for images Magnified x 3200 % First, why accessible PDFs? Originally, our model centered around printed course packs. So, our approach to providing accessible digital course materials initially focused on turning the PDFs we were creating for print packs into word documents and providing both options to students. However, this past June we met again with our Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities on Campus, and due to improvements in technology over the last few years and the growing emphasis on Universal Design, they guided us toward providing a single accessible PDF for all students. In our experience, these PDFs improve the use for all students by reducing file size, allowing text to be easily enlarged, searched and used with note-taking software. We insert bookmarks and set document properties and this seems to be popular with all users.

…what about scanned text or pre-existing digital documents? Creating accessible PDFs is easiest when you are the author of born-digital content, but… …what about scanned text or pre-existing digital documents? The ideal way to create an accessible PDF is to start, as the author, with a word document that is properly laid out (so using styles, auto generated table of contents, headings, where the layout is not done through “tabbing”) and turn it into a PDF using the Microsoft Word Adobe plug-in. Education and creating a culture of access is important because when we’re talking about born-digital content, everyone has the ability to easily create accessible documents from the beginning. This is so much easier than an approach where one person or department retrofits poorly constructed documents down the line. However, most of our work in CMP involves creating accessible PDFs from journal article and book chapter scans that are bundled into a single document. We use Abbyy fine reader for two important reasons: 1.Accurate OCR 2.Save the PDF as vector-based text and image, which greatly reduces the size of the PDF (a recent example is from a 5MB scanned PDF to a 500 KB vector-based PDF).

Step 1: Quality Scan The first step is getting a high quality black and white scan that ensures the text is as clear as possible. We scan directly to PDFs, but you can also scan into Abbyy fine reader if you’re working on a single document.

Step 2: Area Recognition and Reading Order Once the readings for the course pack have been confirmed, we load it into Abbyy fine reader and make the first pass through the document. In this pass, we’re looking to make sure the areas that have been recognized are correct- so for example, columns don't read as a chunk of text all the way across a line from left to right, and that image and tables are recognized correctly. We also look at the font and make sure it’s consistent throughout an excerpt AND we look for the reading order -which you can manipulate in the area properties pane.

Step 3: Accurate OCR → PDF WORD An important step in creating an accessible document from a scan or PDF is to make sure that the characters are recognized completely. Both Adobe Acrobat and Abbyy find reader use OCR (or optical character recognition) to recognize text in static scans/images. Unfortunately, just hitting the “recognize text” button in Acrobat does not mean you have accurate OCR. If you really want to see how correct the OCR is in your PDF, save it as a word document, as shown above. Sometimes the OCR can be very successful if the document originated in word, but often it is abysmal with scans.

Tools for OCR (ABBYY Fine Reader) Instead of using Abbyy as an automatic conversion tool, you can lift up the hood to be able to fine tune the accuracy of your OCR. It’s a very powerful and robust tool- you can actually train Abbyy to recognize symbols- like arrows, Latin characters, etc. and can set it to detect multiple languages.

Step 4: Tagging & Alt Text We save our documents as a tagged PDF, but sometimes the headings and other styles don’t translate and you have to go back in to identify them in Acrobat. This is something we’re still experimenting with to try and improve. There are links at the end of the slides to great resources that provide more information about fixing PDF tagging and accessibility in general using Acrobat software alone. The Acrobat accessibility checker also has great tips for adding alternate text, and WebAim has suggestions for what makes good alt text. I also wanted to mention the Acrobat’s “Read Out Loud” feature under the “View” tab is a great way to actually listen to your PDF.

Step 5: PDF Features and Tips Once we have the vector-based PDF, we add bookmarks for easy navigation in and set the initial view under document properties so that the bookmarks open automatically. We also add document information like the title, author and subject, set the document language, and add copyright metadata. We don’t add additional security to our PDFs because we’ve found that even the lowest security settings interfere with access and student use. We rely on our password protected learning management system to satisfy DRM (only students enrolled in the class have access, and only for the duration of the semester).

Step 5: PDF Features and Tips We’ve also added a tips page in response to feedback from our user surveys Download PDF Print PDF D2L Browser Search & find How to open bookmarks How to follow links Note Taking Software Need Help?

Helpful Links MSU Web Accessibility Policy http://webaccess.msu.edu/Policy_and_Guidelines/web-accessibility- policy.html MSU Web Accessibility Tutorial http://webaccess.msu.edu/Tutorials/acrobat-pdf.html LibGuide http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/access/pdf WebAIM http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/acrobat Social Security Administration Guide to creating accessible documents http://www.section508.gov/sites/default/files/documents/the_social_sec urity_administration_accessible_document_authoring_guide_2.1.2.pdf WebAIM is web accessibility in mind There is a great guide from the Social Security administration, but when I last checked it was no longer available on the site- I’m not sure if they’re working on a new or the link is broken… If you contact me using my email provided at the end of the presentation I can send it to you (it’s in the public domain). E-pack stats: Fall 2014 = 11 Spring 2015 = 9 Summer 2015 = 3-4