Fixing Image-only PDFS: Text/Character Recognition in Acrobat DC
Do I have an image-only PDF?
Often you will inherit a PDF file that was scanned as an
image of text. This means that a sighted person can read it,
but a screen reader cannot. You can tell if you are in this
situation in a couple of ways. If you try to copy some of the
text in your document and paste it into a new document,
you will find you are unable to highlight just the text you
want. Also, if you try to run the accessibility checker, you
will get the Image-only PDF error. You will not be able to
continue fixing accessibility until this error has been fixed.
Fixing the Error
Once you 've established that you have an image-only
PDF, you need to do a few things before working on your
other accessibility issues.
1. Close the Accessibility toolset for now.
2. Open the Enhance Scan toolset (Older versions of Acrobat may not have this tool, but they might have
Text Recognition or OCR Text Recognition toolset. These tools aren't as robust, but they may work with
very clear scans, so they are worth a try).