1. Basics of Accessibility in Adobe PDF
Creating More Accessible PDF files

2. Presentation and Structure
Visible in the document
Not available to assistive technology
Structure
What makes the document look the way it does
Invisible, like frame of a house
Available to assistive technology

3. Presentation = Structure
Match visible with invisible where possible
In Acrobat: Tags
Match visible presentation (section heading, e.g.) with structure (H Tag, e.g.)
Match reading order of tags to logical visible reading order

4. Onion, Jeff Easter, Creative Commons
Layers
Onion, Jeff Easter, Creative Commons

5. Allison McDonald, Labels for Art vs Craft Show, Creative Commons
PDF Tags
Allison McDonald, Labels for Art vs Craft Show, Creative Commons

6. Tags Contain Meaningful Content
Lukas, boxes, Creative Commons

7. Meaningful Content Meaningful content goes into a tag
Non-decorative images
Text
Tables
Links
Form fields

8. Not Meaningful Content
Not meaningful content goes into an Artifact
Background images
Artifacts from scans
Header and footer information
Page numbers

9. Tags in detail
Tag Types, and How to Work With Them

10. Common Tag Types Paragraph Heading List Link Figure Table
Artifact/Background

11. The Right Tag in the Right Place
Tags need to be appropriately matched with content
Have a heading? Apply a heading tag!
Tags need to be in order that matches logical reading order
Need a text equivalent present for meaningful visual elements

12. Tag Tree Where the Tags live Where AT goes to unpack the tags
Notice multiple Tags with same label
Each contains different content
Tag Tree

13. Touch Up Reading Order (TURO) Tool
Put content into tags
Change existing tags
Open from Accessibility Tool
Touch Up Reading Order (TURO) Tool

14. Create or edit a tag with TURO Tool
Select appropriate content
Select with crosshairs
Double click to select
Click button to add or change appropriate tag to the content
Useful for changing existing tags, tagging untagged content

15. Regular text
Noted with a <P>
Paragraph

16. Heading Tags For section and subsection heading text
Different than “headers”, which are in tables
Heading Tags

17. Hierarchy:
List
List Item
Label
List Item Body
List Tag

18. Links and Context Ideal: make it make sense on its own.
Link text should make sense in context at a minimum
Ideal: make it make sense on its own.
Best practice: avoid “Click here” and “Read more”
Link Tag has two elements in tag tree
OBJR
Link text

19. Link Tag in Tag Tree

20. Accessible PDF Links Don’t use TURO Tool
Highlight text with Selection Tool
Right click
Select “Create Link”
Accessible PDF Links

21. Figures and Text Equivalents
Provide text equivalents
Convey intended meaning of visual
Convey text in image

22. Dolovis, Scissortail flycatcher, Creative Commons
Context is Key
Dolovis, Scissortail flycatcher, Creative Commons

23. Text Equivalent Placement
Provide in one or more ways
Alternative text attribute
Figure caption
Longer text description
For charts and graphs, possibly use dataset itself

24. Add Alternative Text to a Figure

25. Color Contrast
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

26. Verify Contrast 4.5:1 ratio of text to background color Check with
3:1 for “large text”
Check with
The Paciello Group Colour Contrast Analyser (
WebAIM Contrast Checker (
Chrome Color Contrast Extension (

27. Only Color Conveying Meaning
Color Use is critical. This chart has three lines on it, one red, one blue, and one green. They are labelled in the chart’s key to the right as Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3. 1 is blue, 2 is red, and 3 is green. But if I cannot distinguish between some or all of the colors, then the meaning is lost.

28. Color Only in Black and White
In greyscale, you can see that they all basically look the same. Especially 1 and 3.

29. Color and Shape Together
With markers added, there is something in addition to color that distinguishes one line from the others: a simple shape. Now 1 is blue with triangles on it, 2 is red with diamonds, and three is green with squares.

30. Color and Shape in Black and White
In greyscale, I can still tell which line is which because the shapes also help to distinguish one from the other. It’s not that we should not use color to convey meaning. It is that we need to use something in addition to color to convey meaning.

31. Artifact and Background
Anything decorative or leftover from a scan
Hides content from AT
Completely(!)
Meaningful?
Do not put in Artifact or Background

32. Touch Up Reading Order Tool Background

33. Acrobat Accessibility Checker
Helpful, but
Can give false positives
Can miss stuff
Still very much worth using

34. Odds and Ends There is no Undo in the Tag Tree, until Acrobat Pro DC
Mind where you drop Tags that you move around the Tag Tree
Run the Accessibility Checker and read its results
Accessibility starts in the source document
Save your PDF often when you do accessibility work

35. Accessible from the Start
Microsoft Word
Document Title in File Tab
Heading Styles
Lists
Alternative text for images
“Repeat as header row at the top of each page” for table header rows
Link text
Color use and contrast

36. Resources WebAIM on PDF (http://bit.ly/22A4oTH)
Adobe on PDF (
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines PDF Techniques (
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Web 2 non-ICT (
ABLE Tech Resources Page (

37. Contact Information
Rob Carr, Accessibility Coordinator, Oklahoma ABLE Tech
@rgcarrjr on Twitter
@OKABLETech on Twitter, OKABLETech on Facebook