Basic PDF Remediation for
Accessibility
Presentation by Jeremy Webster
Pre-Remediation Considerations
Section 1
1. Pre-Remediation Considerations
Can it be built as a webpage instead?
• Webpages handle a great amount of accessibility issues automatically,
requiring far less effort
• OU Campus features a robust accessibility scanner, and the MRC Web
Team is happy to assist with webpage-based accessibility issues
Was it made accessible in its source application?
• Documents made accessible in their source applications (examples:
MS Word and PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign) will typically carry over
most, if not all, of their accessibility when exported to PDF
Obtaining Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
Section 2
2. Obtaining Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is required for PDF accessibility
remediation
• Acrobat Pro DC is available to WSU Faculty and Staff
• If you do not currently have Acrobat Pro DC submit a request for Adobe
Creative Cloud to helpdesk@wichita.edu
• The Adobe Creative Cloud service allows users to download and utilize
a large variety of Adobe applications
• Helpdesk will provide instructions on accessing and downloading the
appl
ications
Setting Up Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
Section 3
3a. Setting Up Acrobat Pro DC
Once you have Acrobat
Pro DC, you will need to
add a number of tools to
both the left and right tool
panes.
These panes can be
opened and closed by
clicking on the arrows in
the center of each.
Left tool pane
open/close arrow
Right tool pane
open/close arrow
3b. Setting Up Acrobat Pro DC
To add tools to the right
pane, click the “Tools”
tab in the upper left
corner.
3c. Setting Up Acrobat Pro DC
To add a tool, click the
“Add” button below its
icon. Add the following
tools:
• Scan & OCR
• Fill & Sign
• Prepare Form
• Accessibility
• Action Wizard
Exit the tool tab by
clicking any right pane
tool button
3d. Setting Up Acrobat Pro DC
To add tools to the left
pane, first open the pane
Right-clicking on the
pane will show all
available tools – select
the following:
• Content
• Order
• Tags
OCR (Optical Character
Recognition)
Section 4
4a. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
If a PDF is a scan of a physical copy rather than a digitally-
created document, the OCR tool is necessary to recognize text
• Before OCR is used, all text in the document is technically simply part
of a single image
• OCR searches through this image for things that are likely text
characters and marks them as such
• The cleaner the scan, the better OCR will be able to recognize what is
and
is not text in the document
4b. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
Open the right tool pane
Select the “Scan & OCR”
tool
4c. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
The ”Scan & OCR”
Toolbar will show toward
the top of the window
Click the “Recognize
Text” dropdown button on
the toolbar
4d. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
Select “In This File” from
the dropdown
4e. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
A secondary toolbar with
more nuanced options
will open. Select the
“Recognize Text” button
on this toolbar to launch
OCR.
4f. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
The secondary toolbar
will disappear when OCR
completes
Re-open the “Recognize
Text” dropdown and
select “Correct
Recognized Text.”
In a new secondary toolbar OCR will go one-by-one through any items it
found questionable. The image of the item as it appears in the document will
appear at the left. OCR’s “recognized” attempt at recognizing the item will
appear in a field at the right
• If OCR’s guess was correct, click the “Accept” button to continue to the
n
ext item, if there are any
4g. OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
• If OCR’s guess is incorrect, type the correction in the “recognized field”
a
nd click the ”Accept” button
• If the item is not actually text, delete anything in the ”recognized as” field.
T
his will change the field to read, “this is not text.” Click “Accept” to
proceed.
• Upon completion of this process the PDF is ready for tagging. Be sure to
save the PDF in its current state
Checking PDF Accessibility
Section 5
5a. Checking PDF Accessibility
To run an accessibility
check on a PDF, we will
first have to enter the
accessibility toolset
Select the “Accessibility”
tab in the right tool pane
5b. Checking PDF Accessibility
The Accessibility toolset
will now be open
Select “Full check” in the
Accessibility toolset
5c. Checking PDF Accessibility
The “Accessibility Checker
Options” dialogue box will
All items
should be
open
selected
Make sure all Checkable
Options are selected
Select “Start Checking” in the
bottom right corner
Select “Start
Checking”
5d. Checking PDF Accessibility
Results of the scan will
show in the left pane
Accessibility
Check Results
5e. Checking PDF Accessibility
Results can be seen under a
Click to expand
series of topic headings –
issues list
“Document,” “Page Content,”
etc.
If there are accessibility
issues, the topic heading will
state how many
Click the arrow to the left of
each topic to expand the list
of issues
5f. Checking PDF Accessibility
A green checkmark means that
the subtopic has cleared the
check with no issues
A white X in a red circle means
that the subtopic has issues that
need to be repaired
A white question mark in a blue
circle indicates that the checker
cannot determine whether the
subtopic passes or not – a
person has to do a manual
check to make sure the topic is
in compliance
5g. Checking PDF Accessibility
A yellow triangle with an
exclamation mark in it typically
indicates a subtopic that the
system was not able to check
because the element on the
page (in this case a table) has
not been constructed in such a
way to allow it
In this case, there is a table in
the document but, since the
content that makes up the table
hasn’t been properly tagged as
such, the system cannot perform
this check
5h. Checking PDF Accessibility
Some subtopics can be further
expanded to look at individual
occurrences of an issue
In this example, three figures or
images – called “elements” – do
not have proper alternative text
Selecting each element will
highlight it in the document
Right clicking each element
opens a menu by which the
element can be repaired
5i. Checking PDF Accessibility
Many PDFs will report errors
for Primary Language, Title,
or both
Both can be easily fixed by
right clicking on the topic,
selecting “Fix,” and, if an
additional option box opens,
simply selecting or supplying
the answer
5j. Checking PDF Accessibility
For subtopics that require
manually checking, right click
and select “Pass”
NOTE: Only do this AFTER
you have checked the item to
make sure it’s in compliance.
5k. Checking PDF Accessibility
A PDF may pass the checker but still not be accessible
• For example, the system cannot determine if reading order or
color contrast is accessible – the document creator(s) and/or
editor(s) must check these for themselves
• Do not assume a PDF is accessible even if it says it is – always
take a look at the tags and reading order to make sure
everything is as it should be
An Introduction to Tags
Section 6
6a. An Introduction to Tags
What are tags?
• As Adobe themselves put it, ”Tagging is essential for PDF accessibility.
Tags establish logical reading order and provide a means for indicating
structure and type, adding alternative text descriptions to non text
elements, and substitute text (referred to as actual text) for elements in
the PDF document.”
Tags are used to indicate two things in a PDF:
• The existence of content
• The type of content (Heading, Paragraph, List, Table, Figure, etc.)
Most of the work necessary to remediate a PDF will normally be
done with tags
6b. An Introduction to Tags
To access the tags view:
• Open the left side tool
pane
• Select the Tags button
6c. An Introduction to Tags
As we can see here, this PDF does not
have any tags – the document will have
to be tagged as part of the process of
making it accessible
Depending on the source of a document,
it may have tags and it may not –
documents should be checked for tags
beforehand
It may be necessary to delete tags and
retag a document to make it accessible
6d. An Introduction to Tags
There are two methods of tagging a document – Autotagging
and Manual Tagging
• Autotagging is generally a significant time saver – the system will
automatically look for and tag all content in a document to the best of
its ability
• There will usually be corrections needed afterwards via manual
tagging
•
Manual Tagging involves using the Reading Order tool to manually
select content and tag it
• Is usually more exact than Autotagging, but takes far longer to do
• The easiest, most time-efficient answer is usually Autotagging the
entire document, then use Manual Tagging to clean it up
6e. An Introduction to Tags
To Autotag our document,
first select the
“Accessibility” tab on the
right tool pane
6f. An Introduction to Tags
Select the “Autotag
Document” tab at the top
of the Accessibility tool
pane
6g. An Introduction to Tags
The left tool pane will now
show a summary report for
the Autotag action
In the left tool pane select
the Tags button again
6h. An Introduction to Tags
In the Tags pane on the
left, click the arrow on
the left of “Tags” to close,
then click again to re-
expand
6i. An Introduction to Tags
We can now see our first tags in
the document.
• The “Figure” tag is the WSU
Letterhea
d graphic at the top of
the page.
• The “Part” tag contains the rest
of the document’s tags.
• Tags frequently subset within
other tags
- To access the tags
within a tag, click the arrow to
the left to expand the view.
6j. An Introduction to Tags
Here we can see an expanded view of the tags in
the document.
• The Figure/Image is the WSU Letterhead logo,
wh
ich we will need to either apply alternative text
to or render as background/artifact
• Under the Part tag we have the document title
(<H2>), the following paragraph (<P>), and three
<Sect> tags in which are tags for other sections of
the document
• <Part> and <Sect> tags are organizational – they
help the creator/editor keep the tags in useful,
orderly groups and do not effect the document’s
accessibility.
6k. An Introduction to Tags
Some commonly used tag types include:
Heading (1 through 6):
List Item:
Paragraph:
Table:
Figure:
T
able Row:
List:
Table Data Cell:
6l. An Introduction to Tags
Some common tag structure examples include:
List Table Link Form
6m. An Introduction to Tags
For a thorough look at working with tags in PDFs,
please visit the PDF Remediation for Accessibility
webpage at https://wichita.edu/pdfhelp
You will find:
• Instructional videos that will guide you through the complete
remediation of two PDFs
• Download links for unremediated versions of both documents
so you can work along with the video or practice on your own
• Download links for remediated versions of both documents
you can use to compare your work with or use as references
for using various tags and techniques
Checking Reading Order
Section 7
7a. Checking Reading Order
Once tag work has been completed it’s time to check
Reading Order
• Reading order is, quite literally, the order in which content will be
presented to the screen reader user
• This is NOT adjusted by rearrangement of tags – Reading Order
has to be set on its own
• While tag work will not change Reading Order, working in
Reading Order CAN affect tags, particularly subset items in
tables and lists
• PDFs with tables and lists may need a number of back-and-forth
visits between Tags and Reading Lists to fully complete
remediation
7b. Checking Reading Order
Select the ”Order” tab in
the left tool pane
7c. Checking Reading Order
When reading order is displayed, all tags
in the document will be shown on the
page
The left pane will show a numbered item-
by-item list of the content in the PDF.
•
• Select an item in the list and use the
arrow keys to proceed through the
document’s reading order
• The numbers in the reading order list
correspond to the numbers in the top left
of every tag
• To move an item in the reading order, left
click and drag it to its intended location
Thank You for Your Time and
Attention!
