Designing for Accessibility

Guides

• Create and verify PDF Accessibility in Acrobat Pro - Adobe
• PDF Issues and Recommendations  - Penn State
• InDesign Accessibility - Penn State

Tips

How to create an accessible PDF

• Use Save as or Export As to save a file or webpage as a PDF
  • Preserves the structure, tagging, etc.
  • Do not use Print to PDF; it will strip away that metadata
• Turn on OCR (Optical Character Recognition) when scanning documents
  • Will recognize text, separating it from the images
  • Otherwise, scan is treated as an image
  • If possible, review the OCR results; it makes mistakes

Easy way to check whether a PDF is accessible

• Try to highlight a few words in a PDF
  • If you can select words, the PDF is accessible
  • If you can only select the entire page, the PDF is an image
    • Make it accessible by using OCR

Giving a presentation? Make sure it is accessible to everyone in the audience with these tips:

• Use large text that can be read from the middle to back of the room. (Visual)
• Check the color contrast of the text to background colors. (Visual, Cognitive)
• Always use a microphone. Even if you have a loud voice. Especially for questions from the audience. (Auditory, Cognitive)
• Post a digital version so that people can revisit the presentation with their preferred tools. (Visual, Auditory, Cognitive)

More Resources:

• Making Events Accessible - checklist from WAI
• Google Slides Accessibility - excellent PDF created by CSUN
• PowerPoint Accessibility - guide from WebAIM
• Checklist for Word and PowerPoint - another guide from Web AIM