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Step | Steps for creating accessible PDFs | ||||||
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1 | In the document properties, enter NCI CBIIT as the Author. In the Keywords field, enter 508 Compliant as one of your keywords. | ||||||
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4 | Run an accessibility full check using the Adobe PDF option.
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5 | Fix any problems reported by the accessibility checker. Documents from Word tend to have more problems than documents from FrameMaker. Documents from Word may need post-processing For example, alternate text you add to images in Word do not always carry over to Acrobat. In this case, you would need to add the alternate text again in Acrobat. Use the accessibility checker report as a troubleshooting guide to narrow down problem areas.
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6 | Once the steps above result in a PDF with no accessibility errors according to Adobe, set the scope of your tables. Adobe does not require you to set the scope but it is one more thing that you can do quickly to prepare your PDFs better for assistive technology.
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It is important to remember that accessibility tools can only partially check accessibility through automation. Of the sixteen standards in Section 508, only seven standards can be partially evaluated automatically. Similarly, of the combined 65 checkpoints in WCAG 1.0 Priority 1 through Priority 3, only nineteen can be partially evaluated automatically. The real key is to learn and understand the web accessibility standards rather than relying on a tool to determine if a page is accessible or not.
Using the Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Tool
Creating a tagged PDF with alt-text specified for each graphic from FrameMaker or Word is the first step in creating a truly accessible PDF file. We must also post process the PDF file to complete that process.
To prepare a PDF for an accessibility check
- Specify the document language as explained here.
- Run the Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Full Check, as follows.
- Select Advanced > Accessibility > Full Check. The Accessibility Full Check dialog box appears.
- Accept the default options, which include the Adobe PDF checking option.
- Click Start Checking. In the resulting report, follow the instructions Acrobat provides for finding and correcting accessibility errors.
Some of these accessibility errors require post-processing of our PDFs. Files originating in Word tend to have more accessibility errors that result in post-processing than do those files originating in FrameMaker.
Our goal is for Adobe to tell us that we have no accessibility errors. Beyond that it is useful to test the document using a screen reader. See this table for ideas.
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