How to Create and Test Accessible PDFs

Federal agencies generate millions of documents each year that they post online. The Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the most popular formats used to publish or disseminate information and materials electronically. Unfortunately, many PDFs are created in a manner that is not accessible to people with disabilities. This webinar will explain how to create, test, and remediate PDFs to ensure access for people with disabilities and conformance with the Section 508 Standards.

Nicshan Floyd, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Accessibility Systems & Technology (OAST) will conduct this session and address common questions about PDF accessibility and review access issues and solutions. In addition, he will offer best practices and techniques from the Accessible Electronic Document Community of Practice. Attendees will learn how to discover accessibility issues by manually examining different components of PDFs such as the Content layer, Tags layer, and Logical Reading Order. They will also learn to utilize Adobe Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker to validate and remediate identified accessibility problems.

Questions can be submitted in advance of the session or can be posed during the live webinar. This session is intended for those involved in creating and working with PDFs for government agencies as well as other entities. Participants are encouraged to submit their questions in advance of the session.

Questions for presenters:

1. For complex tables with more than 50 cells, how do you organize the PDF so that the reading order is correct? How do you properly tag PDFs that were created outside of Adobe? How do you avoid tagging random elements in your document that don't need to be tagged to avoid a tagged annotation failure? Are there any free services online that will help with making documents accessible? Is there a trusted company that handles making PDFs accessible?

2. Is there a place to get certified in accessible PDFs?

3. I create interactive forms using InDesign. It was recently brought to my attention that the Signature Field in my forms cannot be filled in using various web browsers. For instance, the form can be filled in using Internet Explorer but the form cannot be filled in using Chrome and Safari. To acquire the customer "signature", I changed the Signature Field to a Text Box and made both boxes 'required'. When the revised forms are uploaded, the text box is functional and can be filled out using all browsers. My question is why does the Signature Field show correctly in Adobe Acrobat and the field can be filled in a specific browser and fail using the others?

4. What is the best way to ensure that the accessible elements included in powerpoint slides (alt text, etc.) are carried over when converted to a PDF via "save as" and "print to PDF"?

5. Are Adobe and Nuance features comparable for creating accessible PDFs? Which software is the preferred?

6. I end up scanning a lot of older reports that are typed but are typically carbon copies of the original. I have mixed results when running the OCR function in Adobe Acrobat. Are there any tips to how to be more successful in scanning and making these documents accessible?

7. Can you please explain the differences between the tags panel, content panel, and "z-order" panel in Adobe Acrobat, and which panels should be the focus when it comes to making sure they are in proper reading order? Years ago I was told that the Z-order panel mattered the most. Now I'm under the impression that the tags panel is the one that truly controls the reading order when it comes to AT, but I still see a lot of forums and help documents referring to the z-order panel and how that should be in order as well. HELP!

Session Questions

This session is accepting questions from registered users. After you have registered to participate in this session you can submit your questions on your Account Manager page. Please note: the number of questions will be limited and submissions will be closed well before the session starts to provide time to prepare answers.

Registration

• Required

• Cost - Free

• To register please please visit the event page - You must have an account and be signed in to complete your registration. For first time users you must create an account. This step is done only once and you will use the same account to register for different sessions throughout the year. After you create an account, you will immediately be able to register for any of our sessions.

• Continuing Education

  • Certificate of Attendance - 1.5 credit hours