Transportation Library Quick Guide: Accessibility and Section 508: Accessibility Considerations: Adobe PDF

A Word file, once compliant, is converted to a PDF, where there are further accessibility requirements.

Guidance on the Create Accessible PDFs page of the Section508.gov website is most fully developed for Adobe Acrobat Pro. In the PDF Detailed Checklist, 23 questions (listed below) are sorted into five areas:

• Preconditions
• Document properties
• Structure tags
• Objects
• Miscellaneous

With each question, the checklist addresses how to test.

Section508.gov offers PDF authoring guides for Adobe Acrobat DC and older versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro.

A five-part video series from Section508.gov provides guidance on making a PDF accessible. Below are the modules that are part of the series:

• Module 0: Introduction and Background
• Module 1: What is a PDF?
• Module 2: Testing a PDF for Accessibility
• Module 3: Remediating PDFs for Accessibility
• Module 4: Converting Scanned Documents into Section 508 Conformant PDFs

Preconditions

1. Is the PDF a PDF Portfolio or does the PDF have file attachments?

2. Was the PDF generated from Adobe LiveCycle?

3. Does the document contain programming (scripts)?

4. Is the PDF tagged?

5. Is the PDF an image-only PDF or does it contain scanned pages?

Document Properties

1. Does the PDF have a descriptive file name?

2. Is assistive technology access enabled?

3. Is the document language set?

Structure Tags

4. Do the tags follow the visual/logical order of the document?

5. Does the document have decorative content?

6. Is vital information in headers, footers and watermarks duplicated in the document?

7. Are the headings in the document tagged with heading tags?

8. Are lists tagged correctly?

9. Are sections that contain text in different languages tagged with the corresponding language attribute?

Objects

10. Do all meaningful images and other objects in the PDF have a description of their purpose or function?

11. Does the PDF have data tables?

12. Does the PDF have links and controls?

13. Is the PDF a fillable form?

14. Are colors and other visual characteristics (such as size, shape and location) that convey information also described in text?

15. Is the color contrast ratio between text and background sufficient?

Miscellaneous

16. Does the PDF contain audio-only, video-only or synchronized media objects that contain meaningful information?

17. Does the PDF have flashing objects?

18. Does the PDF need an alternative accessible version?