{"id":1463,"date":"2019-11-22T13:11:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2020-02-18T10:53:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T10:53:10","slug":"accessible-pdf-creating-a-pdf-1-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/posts\/1463","title":{"rendered":"Accessible PDFs &#8211; Creating a PDF (1\/5)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is the first of, which I think will be, four part posts series on Accessible PDFs.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t quite understand how to make a PDF fully accessible until I have read these three very useful articles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.adobe.com\/accessibility\/products\/acrobat\/pdf-repair-repair-tables.html\">PDF Accessibility Repair: Examine and Repair Tables<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/pdf-print-devils-format-alistair-mcnaught\">PDF &#8211; the Print Devli&#8217;s Format?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/webaim.org\/techniques\/acrobat\/\">PDF Accessibility<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now I am more comfortable with accessible PDFs and here I am trying to summarise what I have learned about PDF accessibility in bite size chunks. You can find my original blog post at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/openeducationmooc.blogspot.com\/2019\/11\/understanding-accessibility-of-pdfs.html\">Understanding Accessibility of PDFs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Converting files to Accessible PDFs<\/h2>\n<p>There are different ways of creating PDFs. One would be writing to a PDF file from information in a database from a program. I am not considering about this instance as the accessibility of the document created will depend on the way the program is written and there is not a lot you can do (unless you are redoing the program code!).<\/p>\n<p>But when you are creating a PDF file from what I call a source document (say a Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, etc) using available tools to convert that document to a PDF there are things you can do to enhance the accessibility of the PDF created.<\/p>\n<p>First and foremost making a document accessible in the original is much easier than trying to fix a problem transferred from original to the PDF. So make your source document accessible before converting it to PDF. Check the documents for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>headings<\/li>\n<li>alternative text for images<\/li>\n<li>table structures (make sure table header row etc is indicated)<\/li>\n<li>descriptive links<\/li>\n<li>lists<\/li>\n<li>columns<\/li>\n<li>text size, font (San Serif fonts are easier to read), spacing and justification (left justified letters are easier to read)<\/li>\n<li>colour contrast<\/li>\n<li>not depending on colour to differentiate meaning<\/li>\n<li>document title<\/li>\n<li>document language<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>BEFORE<\/strong> converting it into PDF.<\/p>\n<p>You may also want to visit these blog posts from #Accessibility series to get more tips on accessibility:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/posts\/913\">Good practice for accessibility<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/posts\/733\">10 Tips fro Creating accessible Resources<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t have the source document but only the PDF, you can export the PDF file back to Word, Excel or PowerPoint by using <strong>File &gt; Export<\/strong> to where you can address accessibility issues in the original document.<\/p>\n<h2>Creating the PDF<\/h2>\n<h3>Recommended method<\/h3>\n<p>When Acrobat is installed on your computer it will also install PDFMaker add-in which will allow creating PDFs files within an Office application. To create a PDF use <strong>Acrobat<\/strong> tab and then select <strong>Create PDF<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1466\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1466\" style=\"width: 703px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-tab.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1466 \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-tab.jpg\" alt=\"Acrobat tab on Microsoft Word \" width=\"703\" height=\"203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-tab.jpg 1020w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-tab-300x87.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-tab-768x222.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 703px) 100vw, 703px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1466\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1: Acrobat tab on Microsoft Word<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Make sure under <strong>Preferences &gt;\u00a0Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF<\/strong> is selected. By default this is selected.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1467\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1467\" style=\"width: 616px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-PDFMaker.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1467 \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-PDFMaker.jpg\" alt=\"Acrobat PDFMaker Preferences diaglog\" width=\"616\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-PDFMaker.jpg 720w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Acrobat-PDFMaker-300x293.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 616px) 100vw, 616px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1467\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2: Acrobat PDFMaker Preferences diaglog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This method should create a tagged PDF. Tags are essential to make a PDF accessible. I will talk about tags in my next post.<\/p>\n<h3>Alternative Method<\/h3>\n<p>What if there isn&#8217;t an Acrobat tab in your Word application? You can use <strong>File &gt; Save As<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1468\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1468\" style=\"width: 148px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/save-as.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1468\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/save-as.jpg\" alt=\"Word Save As option\" width=\"148\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/save-as.jpg 167w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/save-as-147x300.jpg 147w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 148px) 100vw, 148px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1468\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 3: Word Save As<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Now select File type as <strong>PDF (*.pdf)<\/strong> from the drop-down list and this should create a tagged PDF by default. However, if this is not the case check the correct options are selected by going into <strong>More options&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>and click on\u00a0<strong>More Options<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1470\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1470\" style=\"width: 976px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/more-options-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1470\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/more-options-1.jpg\" alt=\"More Options on Save As \" width=\"976\" height=\"128\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/more-options-1.jpg 976w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/more-options-1-300x39.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/more-options-1-768x101.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 976px) 100vw, 976px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1470\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 4: Save As &gt; More Options<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Clicking on the <strong>More options&#8230;<\/strong> will open a new Save As dialog.\u00a0 Select <strong>Options\u00a0<\/strong>and it will open the Options dialog. Select\u00a0<strong>Document structure tags for accessibility<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1471\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1471\" style=\"width: 394px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/options-dialog.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1471\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/options-dialog.jpg\" alt=\"Options dialog\" width=\"394\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/options-dialog.jpg 394w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/options-dialog-205x300.jpg 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1471\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 5: Options dialog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This should create an accessible PDF.<\/p>\n<h3>NOT Recommended Method<\/h3>\n<p>Now I have shown you the methods that can be used to create accessible PDFs. There is also another method of creating a PDF, which will create a completely inaccessible PDF. Using Print &gt; Print to PDF will create a PDF but this will not be accessible. So avoid this option at all costs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the first of, which I think will be, four part posts series on Accessible PDFs.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t quite understand how to make a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[26,134,133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1578,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}