Adobe Acrobat Pro: Correcting Document Color Contrast Issues

One of the most common issues that hold back the accessibility of PDF documents is the insufficient color-contrast of text. Color contrast in documents need to be high enough so that people with color-blindness or difficulty seeing can still read the document. To fix this issue in Adobe Acrobat follow the steps below.

Correcting Color Contrast

1. Open your file in Adobe Acrobat Pro. (This will not work in Adobe Reader.)

2. Ensure that your file has been turned into editable text and images.

   1. If your scanned PDF is an image file, step 2 will use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to turn the text into an editable format, and is important for selecting the areas you need to adjust.

3. Once you have editable text, there are two ways to fix the contrast issue

   1. Edit a PDF

      1. In Adobe Acrobat Pro, select "Edit a PDF" from your All tools menu.

      2. Click and drag to highlight the section of text you wish to change.

      3. Your edit toolbar should now provide you with options to change your font, font size, and font color. We recommend using black for a text color.

      4. Save your document.

   2. Or, for the text in the entire document, it is easier to "replace the document color."

      1. In Adobe Acrobat (Pro), click on "Menu", then "Preferences."

      2. Under the "Categories" menu, select "Accessibility," then check the box "Replace Document Colors."

      3. Choose the color combination you would like from the “High-contrast color combination” drop-down options (we recommend the “Black text on white” option).

4. Make sure that the option to “Only change the color of black text or line art” is unchecked and that the option to “Change the color of line art as well as text” is checked. 

5. Select “OK” at the bottom right corner of the Preferences popup window. 

6. Save your document.

If you wish to do more accessibility checks on your PDF, please see our articles on how to:

1. Run an accessibility check on your document.

2. Ensure that the text of your document is properly tagged and that the appropriate reading order has been set.

Acknowledgements

Created by Mike Kombate '23, 12/6/2022