Adobe Acrobat Pro: Running PDF Document Accessibility Checks & Accessibility Quick Fixes

Accessibility management tools on Adobe Acrobat Pro allow users to make documents more accessible by giving users the tools to recognize and correct common document accessibility issues.  For those who do not have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro on their own computer, this software can be accessed through computers in the DiSCO.

Preparing your Interface

Chances are, you’ll be checking a number of documents — perhaps dozens. In order to make things move more quickly, take the following steps to surface some tools you’ll be using heavily:

1. On the right hand side of the screen, right-click on the Navigation Pane and check the Content, Order, and Tags options to display them:
   

Running an Accessibility Check

To check the accessibility of your pdf document utilizing Adobe Acrobat Pro:

1. Open the document in Acrobat Pro.

2. From the global bar in the upper left, select All tools, select View more, and then select Prepare for accessibility.

• A Prepare for accessibility panel with a list of available actions will appear in the left panel.

3. Select Check for Accessibility from the expanded options. A popup window will appear with specification options for the accessibility check you would like to run. 

4. Keeping the default options toggled, select Start Checking on the bottom right of the popup window.

   • Adobe Acrobat will check your document for common accessibility issues, once done, results will appear in the tool specific navigation column on the left side of your window. 

5. Toggle between the collapsed sections of your accessibility report to identify what issues need to be fixed on your document to make it more accessible. The primary focus should be on the Document section. 

Running Accessibility Quick Fixes

The following should only be used as a starting point for fixing your PDF accessibility. See our Complete PDF Document Accessibility Remediation for step-by-step instructions on how to fix any and all issues on your PDF documents.  To quickly fix some common document accessibility issues, found in the Document section of the accessibility report, in Adobe Acrobat Pro you can follow these steps:

(Note: this is only one facet of fixing a document’s accessibility)

1. Image-only PDF - right-click on this option and in the options menu that pops up select Fix.

2. Tagged PDF - right-click on this option and in the options menu that pops up select Fix, you can also select the Auto tag Document feature from the expanded Accessibility tool options on the right side of your window.

3. Primary Language - right-click on this option and in the options menu that pops up select Fix, a popup window will appear allowing you to select the primary language of your document (the default selection is English); once selected, selecting the OK option at the lower right of the popup will finalize this change.

4. Title - right-click on this option and in the options menu that pops up select Fix, a popup window will appear where unchecking the Leave As Is option under the Title field and then entering the desired document title into the field and then selecting the OK option on the bottom right corner of the popup window will allow you to change/set the metadata title of the document.

Recommended Fixes for Every PDF

While quick fixes are good, every PDF should go through the full remediation process. This process is outlined on the Complete PDF Document Accessibility Remediation page, and includes the following steps:

1. Setting a descriptive document name and title
2. Checking and modifying tags
3. Checking heading order
4. Ensuring a logical reading order
5. Adding alt-tags to images
6. Adding bookmarks
7. Ensuring links are accessible

Article adapted from Carleton College IT Support