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Check & ensure the accessibility of PDF documents

To make them accessible to people who use assistive technologies

Accessible documents are an advantage for everyone. They are clearly structured and technically prepared in such a way that they can be read aloud by screen readers, for example, and content can be accessed in a targeted manner. Reading aloud is essential for blind and visually impaired people, but is also helpful for anyone who has difficulty reading a text due to dyslexia, ADHD or mental illness, for example.

A common format in which documents are made available is the PDF format.

With the help of Adobe Acrobat Pro, PDFs can be checked for accessibility and, if necessary, defects can be rectified. The better care has been taken when creating the source document, e.g. in Word or PowerPoint, to make it accessible, the less work needs to be done when checking it afterwards.

We therefore recommend the articles Creating accessible Word documents & Creating accessible PowerPoint slides if you have no prior knowledge of this. The tips mentioned there should already be taken into account when creating the source document.

The most important steps for final checking and ensuring the accessibility of PDF documents:

So that this is read out by the screen reader instead of the file name.

So that it is clear in which language the screen reader must read aloud.

Document structure tags mark headings, lists etc. as such and can therefore be recognised and read out by the screen reader. If you consistently use style sheets in the source document, there is little or nothing to do here.

Be careful with footnotes: These usually have to be re-tagged because they are not recognised correctly when exported to PDF.

To ensure that headings, paragraphs, tables, alternative texts of images etc. are read out by the screen reader in the correct order.

So that it is clear to the screen reader what table headings are, what is in table rows and columns and individual table cells, and can read this out in an appropriately structured way.

If the style sheets for headings have been used consistently and in the correct hierarchy in the source document, the bookmark structure is usually created automatically. Bookmarks enable targeted navigation in the document.

Some aspects, such as the document structure tags, are checked automatically. Some aspects must be checked manually, such as sufficient contrast. See Ensure sufficient contrast.

So that the PDF is recognised as technically accessible (e.g. by screen readers).

Instructions & checklists for implementation:

Instructions:

The following instructions explain how to carry out the above steps in Adobe Acrobat Pro:

Ensuring the accessibility of a PDF - without a source document?

This means that you have a document in PDF format and do not know whether accessibility was already taken into account when the source document was created, e.g. in Word. It may be necessary to adapt the entire document.

Watch the video "Adapting existing PDFs to accessibility standards" (opens in new tab)

Checklists:

from the State Competence Centre for Accessible IT Hessen

Recommendation for using the checklists: Acquire the knowledge from the above instructions beforehand.

PDF Checker:

The following tools can be used for an even more detailed check of the accessibility of PDF documents:

Create accessible PDF forms:

First of all: Check whether a PDF form is really necessary because it has to be filled out, printed out, signed and submitted in paper form. Or whether a web form can also be used. This could be less prone to errors.