Commonly Overlooked Issues When Creating Accessible PDF Documents

When posting documents on web sites, they have to follow the same accessibility requirements that the site does. For example, when the web site needs to comply with Section 508, PDF documents do too. There are a few things which I find are often overlooked when creating accessible PDF documents, in the following you can read about those and ensure that you address those issues as well.

In general, there are many technical documents on the internet about making PDF documents accessible. For now, we will only look at the commonly missed issues.

Before creating a PDF document, make sure the source document is accessible as possible, this will save you lot's of time on the long-run. Essentially, make sure that the source document complies with the same set of standards that you will have to follow when creating the PDF, such as Section 508, or WCAG.

After the document is converted, Adobe offers an accessibility checker which will tell you if your PDF document is accessible. It is a common misconception that when Adobe says it is accessible, it is assumed that it is, in fact, accessible. What this statement refers to, however, is that everything that programmatically can be determined meets the accessibility requirements. For example, all elements are identified in the document structure, all form fields are keyboard accessible, the document language is defined, etc.

There are a number of other issues which can only be determined manually. For example. Adobe can tell you if an image has an alternative description, but all it does is checking for the existence of the description. You are responsible to determine if this description matches the image. For example if you label all images with the word "picture", Adobe will find it accessible. From the accessibility point of view, it will not be sufficient, as you have to explain what is on the picture, if the picture has an informative content.

The situation is very similar in case of fillable forms. All fields need to be properly labeled. Only a human tester can determine if these labels properly describe the function of the form field.

When the document links to resources, you have to make sure that these are existing links, and they link to the proper site.

This is, however, not to say that the Adobe accessibility checker is not useful. It is, in fact, a great tool, but we need to use what it is for.

In a previous article, I explained the benefits of manual and automated testing.

Another practice I often see is testing the PDF documents with the built-in Read Out Loud functionality. This feature allows users to listen to the content of the document with human sounding speech. For people with certain visual impairments, it can be a very useful feature, especially when they have to limit the amount of text they read, once they navigate to the document, they can just listen to it. However, it is a misconception that this feature is mostly used by blind people. When blind people use the computer, they already have a screen reader loaded in order to allow them to navigate to the document itself. These screen readers are mostly capable of reading PDF documents as well, so they don't need another reader. Also, the Read Out Loud feature has very limited functionality, compared to a commonly used screen reader, which allows users to perform a more sophisticated reading process, such as allowing a great variety of reading parameters, and reading certain portions of the document, such as current paragraph, next line, etc. These screen readers will also provide many more additional information about the text, such as the current font type or color.

Therefore, while testing with the Read Out Loud functionality is not harmful itself, it does not really say anything about the accessibility of a PDF document. Even when testing with a more sophisticated screen reader cannot be bullet proof, as there are many different screen readers out there and the users don't necessarily have the same version.

Also, in a previous article, I have provided a very detailed explanation about testing with JAWS, which is currently the most popular screen reader, but it does apply to any other readers.

Creating accessible PDF documents is not necessarily a quick and easy process. I hope the above suggestions will help you during the conversion. If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.>