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.

Running an Accessibility Check

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

1. Open the document in Acrobat Pro.

2. Select the “Accessibility” shortcut in the features and tools navigation column on the right hand side of your window. Expanded options will appear. If the shortcut is not present:

   1. Select the “More Tools” option at the bottom of the navigation column or the “Tools” tab on the navigation bar of your window. 
   2. Under the Protect and Standardize section of tools, select the “Add” button below the feature icon. The feature will now have a shortcut in the features and tools navigation column.

3. Select “Accessibility Check” amongst 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 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. Primary focus should be on the “Document” section. 

Running Accessibility Quick Fixes

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:

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 “Autotag 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.

Acknowledgements

Created by Mike Kombate '23, 12/1/2022