PDFs are practical, but they also pose significant accessibility challenges for blind and visually impaired students. Here we will show you how to make your PDFs more accessible.

There are different kinds of PDFs, and they present different accessibility challenges:

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• Text or image PDF
• Created yourself based on a text document
• Created yourself based on a scan
• Downloaded from the internet
• Created with various programs or versions of programs
• Different standards

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PDF metadata

PDFs save and show metadata. Metadata are particularly important if you are planning to make a document available online. The file name will appear in the browser tab and the author’s name is visible to anyone who downloads the PDF. Therefore, you should always check the metadata in your PDFs, regardless of their source.

Creating a PDF from your own text document

The simplest way to ensure an accessible PDF file is to create it yourself from a text document. If you have followed the directions under “Accessible text layout” when creating your source documents, your PDF will also be accessible.

However, for your students with visual impairments, even a relatively accessible PDF is still harder to read than a document in an editable format (MS Word, for example). We recommend that you make the document available in the editable format as well – ideally, as an MS Word document. If you have concerns about copyright or confidentiality, ask your students to sign a declaration that they will not share the document with others.

Making an existing text PDF accessible

Existing PDFs can be checked for accessibility and modified as necessary. For example, it is possible to format text and add alternative text. Instructions can be found in Chapter 4.10.

PDF from a scanned text

Scanning text from a book or journal creates an image PDF. For a screen reader to be able to read the text, it must be converted into a text PDF or MS Word document using optical character recognition (OCR). The OCR output must be checked and edited as needed. This is particularly important with regard to headings, footnotes and alternative text for images.

Further instructions are available in Chapter 4.10.