PDF Accessibility

[cody...@gmail.com]

Hi friends, hope all are well.

 

I work for a company that offers remediated content. We have one particular customer consistently asking for PDF format because, I’m quoting, “it’s the most accessible for all users”. I’ve personally never had great experiences with PDF, and doing research yielded very conflicting information including issues with reflowability, but I’m only one human with one perspective. So, I’m wondering what y’all think. Can a fully accessible PDF be made? Including reflowability and the ability to change font? Does anyone have one that is sharable as a sort of Proof Of Concept? The group perspective is greatly appreciated. Thanks kindly for your time.

    All the best,

    Cody Care

 

[Mujtaba Merchant]

Hi Cody,

 

Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, I don't have a ready document to share as I'm currently at home and most of my work documents are at the office. Plus, they're confidential.

 

From my experience, creating an accessible document involves preparing an accessible Word document with our content and then saving it as a PDF. I think the shortcut to save as PDF is ALT + F + Y, but it's not working on my home computer for some reason.

 

Regarding your question, a fully accessible PDF can be made, but it requires proper tagging and structuring. PDFs can be made reflowable and font sizes can be adjusted, but it's crucial to follow best practices during the creation process.

 

If you're looking to create accessible PDFs, I'd recommend starting with an accessible Word document and then converting it to PDF using the "Save As" PDF feature. This way, the PDF will inherit the accessibility features from the Word document.

 

HTH, have a good one!

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[azhar...@gmail.com]

Hi,

 

I agree with most of the points mentioned by Mujtaba.

 

It is possible to create fully accessible PDFs, but most of the time people either do not know or they do not have the tools to create accessible PDFs. Therefore, 90% of time we come across  PDFs that do not work with screen readers.

 

For simple documents, as suggested,  the best way is to create an accessible Word doc and then convert it to PDF. The easiest way to convert is to hit F12, then hit tab to choose document type, hit P to get PDF and press enter.

 

All the best.

 

Azhar

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/018b01dc2d7c%243f5a7640%24be0f62c0%24%40gmail.com.

[Quentin Christensen]

It also depends on your needs.  I agree that starting with a Word document and exporting that to PDF tends to work quite well (Note that I think the shortcut has changed - several times - so you might need to press ALT+F then arrow down your file menu either to export then save to PDF, or in mine currently I can press alt+f and "Save to PDF" is right there near "Save" (It is, in Microsoft's infinite wisdom, alt+f, y, 3..... because of course it is....)

What I was going to say re your needs though, is the original intention of PDF was a document that DIDN'T change and looked identical for everyone who used it.  That was really the only reason to push that format over say, just sending someone the Word document...

But yes, if your client insists on a PDF file, that can be made accessible.  The main offenders for bad PDFs are files which are scanned with office scanners and turned into PDF files which are essentially just photographs of the page.  Properly created PDFs can be quite accessible, although I know we do often find various formatting like tables etc may not work the same as in other formats.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/009d01dc2d85%24149c7350%243dd559f0%24%40gmail.com.

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