1. Accessible PDFs Mark Hale SCIT 6/20/2013

2. Agenda PDF issues Bottom Line on PDFs How to Triage PDFs Your PDF Plan 2

3. Vocabulary Accessibility Assistive Technology Screen Reader 3

4. PDF Issues Inflexible representation of paper Display badly on mobile or assistive technology Image PDFs are almost unusable for mobile devices, and are inaccessible to screen readers In some counts, PDFs are fastest growing part of web 4

5. Bottom Line on PDFs Avoid them in favor of web Offer alternative presentations Use the web for forms and tables Avoid remediation in favor of re-creation or replacement 5

6. How to Triage PDFs Worst - Image PDFs – Click in Acrobat selects whole page Text PDFs Click on a word selects the word – File Properties says Untagged Tagged PDFs – File Properties says Tagged – Apply PAC and Acrobat Pro for more info 6

7. Your PDF game plan Take inventory – Use Google Advanced Search on your domain – Count by species – Carry out triage analysis Avoid or discard Re-build communication from source – Convert to Word or Web Convert to survey or workflow (eventually) 7

8. Adobe: Characteristics of Accessible PDFs A logical structure and reading order Alternate text descriptions for figures, form fields, and links Navigational aids Security that doesn’t interfere with AT Fonts that allow characters to be extracted to text These are all things to be fixed 8

9. How to Make Good PDFs Start with Structured Document in Word Save As PDF (built into Word) or use PDF menu bar if Acrobat Pro is installed Don’t use forms or tables OR – Remediate (at great difficulty) 9

10. Remediation – the Whole Truth 1.convert to text through optical character recognition, if it is an image PDF 2.add correct tags to all text elements 3.allocate structurally correct headings 1-6 4.mark each paragraph as single paragraph 5.mark listings as (interlaced) lists 6.define table headers for your data table 7.identify the documents correct reading sequence 8.add alternative texts to charts and images according to your desires 9.move layout graphics as well as headers and footers to the background 10.assign the correct language to the document 11.define language changes within the document 12.add bookmarks for easier navigation 13.define security settings such that they don't block assistive technologies 14.add field labels to form fields 15.define internal and external references (clickable links and indexes) 16.add correct assignments of foot notes 17.enable reading by means of text flow 18.eventually, the accessible document is put to a series of quality checks, performed by sighted and blind experts 10