Make your PDFs accessible: Home
Accessible PDFs
PDFs are a flexible and convenient way to share information. But they are often not structured properly, which can create barriers for users, including those who use assistive technologies.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to make PDFs accessible. It is much easier to resolve accessibility issues in Microsoft Word and similar software before saving them as a PDF.
The steps below can help ensure that your PDF is accessible. It is designed to be used alongside the Rice Digital Accessibility office's resources and trainings, which provide specific guidance on different document types.
This guide is adapted from the University of Washington's Documents.
Step 1: Learn about digital accessibility
Overview of digital accessibility
All accessible digital documents include several common characteristics, regardless of the document format.
- Key concepts for accessible documents (Rice login required)
- Intro to Digital Accessibility at Rice [webinar]
Tools
Explore these tools for checking the accessibility of digital documents:
- Document accessibility checkers
- PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC): Free checker that reviews requirements against both WCAG and PDF/UA success criteria (platforms: Windows)
- axesCheck: Free web-based checker that provides a basic pass-fail report against WCAG and PDF/UA success criteria
- Office 365 Accessibiilty Checker: Built-in accessibility checker in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and other Office 365 products (platforms: Windows 10, 11; macOS, Web)
- Adobe Acrobat Pro Accessibility Checker: Built-in tool to improve accessibility of PDFs (platforms: Windows, macOS)
- Available for free to Rice faculty and staff. Student options available through Rice OIT.
- Color contrast checkers
- Colour Contrast Analyser (platforms: Windows, macOS)
- WCAG Contrast Checker for Firefox: Firefox extension that displays color contrast ratios in a sidebar and flags color combinations that fail WCAG contrast requirements
- Alt text tools
- Image Accessibility Creator: Resource from Arizona State University that helps draft alt text and long descriptions for images, complex graphs, and charts
- Math Detective: Generates draft alt text for images of math formulas
- Screen readers
Document-specific accessibility features
Learn about accessibility as it applies to common types of digital documents:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Word Accessibility Essentials [webinar]
- Google Documents
- InDesign Accessibility Essentials [webinar]
- Intro to PDF Accessibility [webinar]
- Adobe Acrobat PDF
- Acrobat & PDF Accessibility Essentials [webinar]
- LaTeX accessibility [forthcoming, Fondren Library]
Rice's Digital Accessibility office maintains an extensive offering of accessibility resources, live and self-paced trainings, and events. Check out their website for upcoming offerings.
Step 2: Create your document
Determine what word processing or content creation software you will be using to write your document. The library recommends using Microsoft Word, but your field may have other preferred applications.
- Rice OIT maintains a list of current free or reduced-cost software available to members of the Rice community:
- If you are using a template created by a colleague, be sure to use built-in accessibility checking tools to confirm it meets accessibility standards.
Provide a descriptive file name and title
The first piece of information most users will encounter when accessing a document is the file name. A unique, descriptive file name helps users understand the general topic of the document.
Use a short, unique file name that describes the content or purpose of the document. Do not use special characters (underscores and hyphens are acceptable).
Apply similar considerations when developing the document title. A document's page title is the first thing assistive technology will recognize and read.
Step 3: Check for accessibility
Built-in tools
Use any built-in tools to check accessibility, if you haven't yet done so during the writing process (see Document-specific accessibility features above). Follow any prompts to resolve issues, re-running the checker as needed.
Manual review
Built-in accessibility checkers are helpful, but they are not complete. They detect rule-based issues, but they cannot evaluate content for logical reading order or context. While accessibility checkers are a critical element of this process, the following items are important to manually review:
- Do headings form an outline of the page content?
- Do images have meaningful alternative text (no images of text), and are non-important images marked as decorative?
- Are tables used solely for presenting rows and columns of data (not for layout), and are the column and row headers properly identified?
- Are lists used to identify all content that can be described as a list of something?
- Is proper document metadata included?
- Does the document have a title that describes its topic or purpose?
- Has the language of the document (or individual parts of a multilingual document) been defined?
For additional guidance on these issues, please see Key concepts for accessible documents (Rice login required).
Step 4: Save document as PDF
Once you have finalized your document in Word, or similar, be sure to save the file as a PDF (retaining a copy of the original source file).
Keep accessibility settings when you convert the document. When converting to PDF, use settings that retain tags and accessibility formatting. Avoid "Print to PDF" settings as they will remove your tags and accessibility formatting.
Step 5: Check PDF for accessibility
Once you have created the final PDF, it is important to confirm that any accessibility features from the word processing or content creation software are carried forward.
- PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC): Free checker that reviews requirements against both WCAG and PDF/UA success criteria (platforms: Windows)
- Adobe Acrobat Pro Accessibility Checker: Built-in tool to improve accessibility of PDFs (platforms: Windows, macOS)
- Available for free to Rice faculty and staff. Student options available through Rice OIT.
Step 6: Fix accessibility in the source document
Although you can make accessibility changes to the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro, it's recommended that you return to the source document to make any changes.
Step 7: Repeat
Repeat steps 2-6 as often as needed until your PDF checker shows no errors and you have completed a manual review.
