PDF accessibility guides

Practical steps for small organisations, written for people who are not accessibility specialists.

• ADA Title II and PDFs: what small governments need to know
  A plain-language summary of how the ADA Title II web rule applies to PDFs and other documents on city, town, district and school websites, with the published deadlines and exceptions.
• How to check a PDF for accessibility
  Four ways to check whether a PDF is accessible: a free automated scan, the Acrobat accessibility checker, PAC, and a screen reader test. What each can and cannot find.
• Set the title and language of a PDF
  How to give a PDF a document title and a language in Word and Acrobat so screen readers announce it correctly.
• What is a tagged PDF and how do I make one?
  Tags describe a PDF's structure so screen readers can navigate it. How to tell if a file is tagged and how to create tagged PDFs from Word.
• Add alternative text to images in a PDF
  When images need alternative text, how to write it, and how to add it in Word and in Acrobat.
• Scanned PDFs: how to make them accessible
  Scanned documents are pictures of text. Why they fail accessibility checks, how OCR helps, and why recreating the document is often better.
• Make tables in PDFs accessible
  How header cells work in accessible tables and how to create tables in Word that export to accessible PDF.
• Bookmarks in long PDFs
  Why long PDFs need bookmarks for navigation and how to create them from headings in Word.
• Accessible agendas and meeting minutes for small public bodies
  A short process for producing accessible agendas, packets and minutes every month, starting from a Word template.