1. Creating Accessible PDF’s for the Web
Kelly Helming, ATRC

2. What is a PDF?
Adobe released Version 1.0 Windows in June 1993, the Mac version arrived the following September.
“Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format used to present and exchange documents reliably, independent of software, hardware, or operating system. Invented by Adobe, PDF is now an open standard maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). PDFs can contain links and buttons, form fields, audio, video, and business logic. They can also be signed electronically and are easily viewed using free Acrobat Reader DC software.” – Adobe
PDF/A – Archiving
PDF/E – Engineering
PDF/X – Printing

3. How do I make a PDF? Must originate in another application:
Live text: word processing & page layout applications
image-based image editing applications & scans
From a scan:
Image-based until OCR is initialized to render live text

4. What is Accessibility for the Web?
From WCAG 2.0, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.”

5. What is an Accessible PDF?
An accessible PDF that is structured in such a way (WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA) as to allow people with disabilities to experience both the logic and content of that file via the use of screen readers or other assistive technology. Imagine a document with no structural organization. Design layout view vs. reflow view.

6. A Word About Screen Readers
Essentially, a screen reader functions as a set of “eyes” for the visually impaired, enabling them to navigate the computer with keyboard shortcuts. The PDF is “digested” by the screen reader in the order found in the tags panel. That said, an illogically ordered PDF will make that experience seem like searching for a needle in a haystack. See the American Foundation for the Blind for more information and a table of several screen readers with descriptions. For the purposes of this session, “Screen Reader” and “Assistive Software” are used interchangeably.

7. Closer Look: Set-up the PDF Interface and Accessibility Checker
Navigation Panes
Add: Reading Order Pane
Add: Tags Pane
Add: Content Pane
Toolbar – add from heads-up display
Add: Accessibility shortcut to the right panel

8. Hands-on: Perform a full check
Logical Reading Order – Requires Manual Check
“Reflow” will show how this looks to assistive software: View > Zoom > Reflow
Contrast – (Low-Vision Users) Requires Manual Check
Tags
Governs reading order for the screen reader
Tag photo/caption/frame as background or figure/caption
Add bookmarks if needed
Metadata: Title is required
Review report

9. Resources and further reading
Contrast Checkers
er/
contrastanalyser/
Accessibility:
centers/pdfua-competence-center/
PDF:
centers/pdfua-competence-center/
508/making-files- accessible/checklist/pdf/index.html
te-verify-pdf-accessibility.html