Monday, April 28, 2014

Are your PDF's accessible?

You're a writer, a researcher, or a member of a work group that shares information using the popular "pdf" (portable document format). It's really neat- no matter what type of computer (or even tablet/smart phone) someone opens it on, it will always be formatted the same! It's also "locked" so folks can't change or edit your words.

But, what if you used a screen reader to read it to you? Would it work?

Making PDF's accessible under the ADA is not difficult, but it does take some forethought. Here are several sites that can help you to become aware of accessibility and PDF creation.

Creating Accessible Adobe PDF Files: A Guide for Document Authors
http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/pdfs/acro6_pg_ue.pdf

Creating Accessible PDFs: http://www.howto.gov/web-content/accessibility/create-accessible-pdfs

PDF Accessibility: Defining Acrobat PDF Accessibility
http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/

PDF Accessibility: How to Create Accessible PDFs Using Adobe Acrobat
http://www.csus.edu/accessibility/guides/creating_accessible_pdfs.pdf

With the web becoming a common distribution point for documents of every sort, and with PDFs becoming one of the top means for producing and disseminating content, ensuring full access becomes more and more critical.

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