In her Knowbility Intro to Documents & PDFs session, Julie Romanowski shared her knowledge and insights for working with Microsoft Word and Google Docs to create accessible PDFs.
Director of Accessibility Services at Knowbility, Romanowski discussed basics of document and PDF accessibility, accessibility checkers, and shared tips for creating accessible documents.
While I’m no longer involved with creating and workings with PDFs (read what you need to know before publishing a PDF), I know there are organizations that regularly create and provide PDFs to their clients, customers, and users.
If you’re going to publish PDFs, you need to know what it takes to create accessible PDFs. And the first step to do that, as Romanowski discussed in her session: make sure the source document is accessible.
Here are my notes.
Intro to Documents & PDFs
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Essential factors for an accessible document: can be read by everyone, including disabled people. In addition it conforms to accessibility guidelines, such as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). And it works with assistive technology
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Why design for accessibility? 15% of the world’s population has some form of disability. Everyone benefits from accessibility
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You can create accessible PDFs, but you need to use authoring tools that create accessible documents
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How can you make accessible documents? Use a descriptive document title. Add document language, alternative text for images, descriptive links, and valid table structure.
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PDF tags provide structured representation of content in a document. They allow people who use assistive technology to understand the document’s content in the same way as a visual user.
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Microsoft Word accessibility:
- Assistive tech support enabled by default
- Built-in accessibility checker
- Both free and paid Microsoft Word versions generate accessible PDFs
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Google Docs Accessibility
- Support for screen readers & screen magnifiers must be turned on (off by default)
- Doesn’t have built-in accessiblity checker, but there are add-ons. Paid GrackleDocs is good accessibility checker. (Unfortunately, GrackleDocs doesn’t reveal pricing on their site. I found a 2020 GrackleDocs review that said pricing was $25/user per month, or $180/user per year. Group pricing is available for education.)
- Generates untagged PDFs with missing primary language, document title, and unordered tabs (meaning you’ll need to add tags to PDFs created directly from Google Docs)
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Interesting to learn: creating a document in Google Docs, exporting it as a Microsoft Word document, then converting the Word document to PDF will retain most of the formatting elements from the Word document. And create a more accessible PDF than one exported directly from Google Docs to PDF. Note: additional formatting will still be needed.
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Acrobat Pro Accessibility Checker will report findings for PDF accessibility, highlighting document properties, logical reading order, page content. Note: you’ll need to do manual checks for logical reading order, color contrast, and navigation links.
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Creating a PDF from Microsoft Word? Don’t use Print to PDF. It will strip out formatting and headings.
Always use File > Save As when you save a PDF in Microsoft Word.
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If you don’t have a screen reader to check a PDF, use View > Read Out Loud option in Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Pro. Will let you know if reading order makes sense, but it won’t announce headings.
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Remember, accessibility is a journey. We’re constantly learning. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”-Maya Angelou
