Ensuring That Your PDFs Are Accessible
Simply stated, a file is considered accessible when it can be read by a computer’s screen reader for individuals with disabilities. It is an easy process to check and see if the PDFs that you have uploaded for your classes on Brightspace are accessible to students with a screen reader. First, to check for accessibility, I need to ask you a question:
How did you create this PDF? Did you:
A.) use a photocopier or photocopied original
B.) a word processor, such as Word or iWork
C.) created it inside of Adobe Acrobat
If you chose B or C, your files are generally accessible to a student’s screen reader, for example Natural Reader (available for free here) or the Apple built in VoiceOver option. If you chose option A: your file is NOT accessible. The student’s screen reader will not work because the file was created with an image as it’s base ,where as the other two have document bases. What this means is that the reader doesn’t know there are words there to read.
Please click on the above options for a quick example of the difference. When you open the .pdf, try to select the text with your mouse by clicking and dragging (which is how a lot of screen readers work). If you can highlight individual lines, like example B, it has a text base. If when you select, you get a large square example A you have an image base. Give it a try.
If you own a copy of Adobe Acrobat (available for purchase here), the program can help you make your PDF accessible. With Acrobat, you can have the program recognize the words, by selecting the following from the menu options:
view–>tools–>accessibility.
In the menu that pops up on the right side of the screen, you should see an option that says “Recognize Text,” select that and then select “In this File.” From there select “All Pages” and click “OK.” It will now read the words on the screen and make your PDF accessible. Please make sure you double check the converted text for correctness.
Should you so choose, you also have the option for a full accessibility check of any PDF you use. In the menu options select:
view–>tools–>accessibility, and under “accessibility” (located at the bottom of the menu that pops up), you can run an “accessibility check” that will give you suggestions on how to make your PDF completely accessible.
This is a great tool to help with the creation of alt. tags for photos so that a screen reader can tell him or her what they would be seeing should they be visually impaired.
This is not the case if you have Adobe Reader (available for free here). Adobe Reader doesn’t have the ability to do this.
If you do not own a version of Adobe Acrobat and you have a great quality copy (properly aligned, clear type written text), you can use a free online conversion resource such as www.pdftoword.com, and it will do it for you, however it does take some time for this process to complete.
For more information about creating accessible documents, visit the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at CITL’s website.