Adobe Acrobat
7 Keywords: PDF, Adobe Acrobat, PDF Accessibility, Adobe Reader, Adobe, Acrobat, Portable Document Format (PDF)
Adobe have developed an application called Acrobat which is used to create Portable Document Format documents. This format holds its design elements very well when used across platforms and the internet so the author can guarantee that what they wished the reader to see will be available when saved or printed.
This can cause accessibility difficulties especially if the document is saved as a picture, as this means the text can not be read by screen reader software or text to speech. It may even have to be re-scanned using optical character recognition. However, it is possible to save word processed documents that use styles, with headings, page numbers and page breaks with properly designed tables into accessible PDFs or to make the original Adobe Acrobat PDF accessible.
Links
- Accessibility checks for PDF files
Seven quick checks offered by the Open University for making sure your PDFs are accessible. - Adobe Accessibility Training Resources
Reading and creating accessible PDF documents – a set of tutorials that are easy to follow
Guides
- Adobe PDF Accessibility
The Portable Document Format (PDF) developed by Adobe can be made accessible, but it very much depends on how the original document is designed. If it is a poster created in a publishing application, scanned or saved from a Word document and locked down for copyright reasons then saved as PDF, it is liable to act in the same way as a picture. This means the text cannot be read by a screen reader or adapted for easier reading. It is appreciated that the concept of the PDF is to ensure that printed or saved versions of a document remain as the author intends, but there are ways to help the reader who uses assistive technologies or requires different formats of the text and graphics.
- Adobe PDF Easy Reading
The Portable Document Format (PDF) developed by Adobe can be easier to read if it has the right tags for graphics and a structured layout as well as reading areas that flow in a way that makes sense when they are read with a screen reader or text to speech. Sadly there are times when PDFs are totally inaccessible so a work around is required. This guide offers some hints and tips for easy reading with further links.
