PDF Accessibility

The following are the most important things to look at when we are making PDF accessible.

Basic rules apply to make PDF Accessible

Document must have a title to identify it.

  • Missing Title is the most common issue that most of the file has. Make sure to add the appropriate title of the file. Title can be the same as the header of the document.
  • Steps to Apply Title:
    • Click on File>Properties. The Document Properties window will pop up.
    • Click on Description-> Enter Title
    • Click on Initial View-> Set Show field to “Document Title”-> Hit Ok.

Texts in the document has to be readable and searchable

 

  • How can you check?

Try selecting text using mouse, or select all using Edit>Select All from Adobe Acrobat menu. If you are not able to select the text then it is an image file and not accessible. You will need to convert it into readable text.

  • Steps to convert into Recognizable text
    • Click on View>Tools>Scan & OCR.
    • At the top of the screen you will see Recognize Text>Settings>All pages/Current Page>Searchable Image> OK.
    • You will see the image is selectable.


  • This feature is very useful when we try to make old scanned documents accessible. In that way the texts will be searchable on the PDF document.

Tab order must work

  • Tabbing should work properly. When you click on the Tab button on your keyboard it should work on the order so user can access document with keyboard and without mouse

Color contrast ratio has to be high enough to make it readable.

  • In the Adobe Acrobat Pro we need to manually check the color contrast ratio. According to WCAG 2.0 the contrast ratio of text is at least 4.5:1. The text on the document should be easily readable.

Images have to have alt text.

  • Make sure all images have alt text and alt text should describe the purpose of the image.

Images with texts are not accessible.

  • Images with the texts in the documents are not accessible. Logo is fine. If in some case, you need to have texts in the image then add all texts in the image caption.

Nested Headings

  • Headings should pass appropriate nesting. Multiple H1s in the single page is not allowed. Heading has to be in the proper way. H1 > H2 > H3 > H4 > H5.

Read Out Loud

  • Read Out Loud Speech recognition should work properly

  • Click on View>Read Out Loud>Activate Read Out Loud then select any text or select all and make sure it speaks all words.

Several other Rules that we cannot check by looking at the document and performing any action.

Tagged Content

If you see a whole bunch of issues like the image below, that means the PDF has not been tagged. And all other issues are related to it such as Tagged Content Tab order, Nested Alt Text, etc. You will need to right click on “Tagged PDF” and click “Fix”. All issues will be resolved by itself.

One way to make sure your document is tagged:

Click on File>Properties>Description>Tagged PDF>Yes

Acrobat accessibility explains better ways to fix issues with steps and descriptions for all other issues.

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