Insights
Five quick wins for more accessible PDFs
PDFs are everywhere, and they are one of the most common places accessibility falls apart. A PDF that looks fine on screen can be a wall of nothing to a screen reader. The good news is that a few habits make a big difference. Here are five quick wins.
1. Start in the source document
Most accessible PDFs are made accessible before they become PDFs. Build the document properly in Word or your design tool first, then export. Fixing a finished PDF by hand is much harder than doing it right at the source.
2. Use real headings
Do not fake a heading by making text big and bold. Use the actual heading styles. Headings are how a screen reader user navigates a document, jumping from section to section. Without them, they are stuck reading top to bottom.
3. Give every image alt text
Every meaningful image needs a short text description. Decorative images should be marked as decorative so they are skipped. An unlabeled image reads as "image" and nothing else, which helps no one.
4. Set the reading order and language
Make sure the content reads in a logical order, not the order shapes happened to be placed on the page. Set the document language too, so the screen reader pronounces words correctly.
5. Tag tables properly
Tables need real header rows so a screen reader can say which column and row a value belongs to. An untagged table becomes a jumble of disconnected numbers.
When to get help
If you have a backlog of important PDFs, forms, or reports that need to be accessible, remediating them one by one is slow work, and getting tables and forms right takes practice. That is something we do for clients, along with training your team so new documents start accessible.