Library Accessibility

Benefits

PDFs that are just scanned images of book pages are not accessible, since a screen reader cannot read the words on the page. Making a document machine-readable enables:

• Screen reader users to access the content
• Users to search the contents of the PDF, and copy and paste from it

Tips

Create Accessible PDFs from Microsoft Word Documents or PowerPoint

1. Follow steps for creating an accessible document using Word or PowerPoint
2. Save as an Adobe PDF
3. Identify the document language
4. Use the Touchup Reading Order feature

Create Accessible PDFs from Scanned Documents

This requires Adobe Acrobat X Pro, which is available on staff computers maintained by HCC IT

1. Use Adobe Acrobat Pro to automatically OCR scanned documents. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, will convert the image into text that is machine-readable and searchable.

• Creating Accessible PDFs

  from MSU Web Accessibility site

• WebAIM Accessible PDFs

  In-depth overview covering accessible PDFs

• Creating Accessible PDFs in Adobe InDesign

  Tutorial from Penn State.

• SSA Guide: Producing Accessible Word and PDF Documents

  Guidelines from the Social Security Administration (129 pages).

• Creating Accessible PDF Files

  A guide for creating accessible PDF files in a number of different Adobe products (86 pages).

• PDF Scan with OCR

  This pamphlet from the Internet Archive includes OCR. Notice that you can select the text of the pamphlet, or CTRL+F to search the document.

• Non-accessible PDF

  A scanned document that has not been OCR'd, and is not accessible. Notice that you cannot select text or search the document.