PDF Accessibility

PDFs come in many shapes and sizes and so fully determining the accessibility of a PDF document is challenging. Whether they consist of scanned-in textbook pages (which is almost never accessible without a lot of extra work) or are converted Word docs, the same accessibility rules apply.

When a course is reviewed, PDFs are first checked using Blackboard's built-in accessibility checker and then, if necessary, are given a closer look using Adobe Acrobat Pro's full accessibility checker. As seen in the resources linked below, there are many steps to making a PDF completely accessible, but above all else the PDF should have a title, text should be readable and properly tagged, all images should be properly described, and text should have sufficient contrast (this means no red text on a white background!). These are the most commonly seen issues.

Tips

• Use software that creates accessible PDFs, such as Microsoft Word (Windows only). Word for Mac cannot create an accessible PDF. You must either use LibreOffice or save to PDF on a Windows computer.
• Run OCR on scanned items.

Additional Resources:

• Adobe PDF Accessibility Overview
• Section508.gov: Create Accessible PDFs
• HHS.gov: Making Accessible PDFs (Helpful when starting from Word doc)
• HHS.gov: Tagging PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro (Helpful when remediating existing PDFs)

Also, note that when linking to library PDF resources, you cannot merely copy the URL in your address bar. Many databases generate a URL dynamically from your search, and that URL only works for the duration of your login session with that database. It won't work for anyone else, and it won't work for you if you log out and log back in. What you need is the permalink, sometimes called the persistent URL or PURL. View the Empire State College article on how to create a permalink to see how to get the permalink for all of the library databases.