PDF offers a range of options, tools and wizards that allow users to create document more accesible and with Acrobat 7, PDF is now able to communicate more effectively with screen readers.
This is a first of a long series of tips on PDF and Acessibility.
In order to make your PDF accessible you must control the following features:
keyboard and scroll navigation
improve texts for speech reader softwares
make your PDF "tagged"
support for high-contrast viewing, and the ability to zoom in and reflow text on the screen
Tip #1 : Tag PDFs
To tag a document in Acrobat is very simple. From menu View > Navigation Tabs > Tags open the Tags panel that shows you the document's tags in a hierarchy.
In order to obtain a well tagged document you can let Acrbat make the work for you, adding tags automatically. From menu item Advanced > Accessibility > choose Add Tags item.
Characteristics of a properly tagged PDF (via PDFPlanet):
- The PDF file includes a logical reading order for its content
- Images are given correct alternate descriptions
- Tables are correctly tagged to represent the table structure
- Form-fields are authored to promote their utility to screen-readers
- Represents text as Unicode to clear up composition irregularities such as soft and hard hyphens
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