How to make PDFs Accessible | Episode 5: Irvine Valley College

Welcome to episode five on community college PDF accessibility. Today, we focus on Irvine Valley College’s DSPS Student Parent Night 2023 document.

Video Guide

If you’re interested in the real-life practice and nuances of document remediation, here are Episode 1, Episode 2,  Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 8, Episode 9, Episode 10, Episode 11, Episode 12, Episode 13, Episode 14, Episode 15, Episode 16, and Episode 17 in our PDF Accessibility Community College Series.

Key Issues from this Episode

The document originated from PowerPoint. We knew to expect multiple issues on our road toward PDF accessibility.

Here’s a run-down of issues after running the auto-tagger:

• Header Issues: The document incorrectly uses ‘p’ tags for headers. These should be formatted as ‘h1’ or other appropriate header tags. Inconsistent tagging leads to a confusing heading hierarchy.
• Acronym Clarity: The text “HS Student Parent Night” uses unclear acronyms. Expand acronyms for clarity. Change the text in the document properties.
• Figure Tags: You should add alternative text to figure tags to help visually impaired users understand image content. Transcribe text in figures into the alt text area. Artifact any figures that don’t add value.

• List Continuity: A disjointed list that spans multiple pages should be streamlined into a single list tag so as not to confuse screen readers.
• Link Management: Multiple hyperlinks to the same source on the same page is excessive and non-informative.
• Color Contrast Issues: Poor color contrast requires changes for legibility. Change font color in the editor. Use black and other dark colors to enhance accessibility.

• Reading Order Complications: Use the reading order tool to select content and mark it as a text paragraph for proper flow.
• Misplaced Content: Some content did not highlight when selected due to possible OCR errors. Artifact the content as a temporary fix.

Here’s a run-down of issues after running the PAC tool:

• Embed Missing Fonts: This can cause issues with text display. Embed the missing fonts using the preflight tool.
• Missing Link Annotations: Create content entries for link annotations to make links accessible.
• Metadata and Structure Tree Issues: There were problems with the structure tree and metadata, which required fixes to comply with PDF/UA standards.
• Non-Tagged Path Objects: This can lead to accessibility issues. Head to the Content panel and artifact these objects.

PRO-TIP: Save your document before entering the Content panel as it’s very easy to mess up your PDF in there!

• Multiple span tags: These came through due to the initial PowerPoint formatting and led to errors showing in the PAC tool. Carefully inspect and manually correct.

Download the Free Section 508 Checklist for PDF Accessibility:

Conclusion

PowerPoint conversions do not produce accessible PDFs. During our journey to PDF accessibility, Adobe Acrobat sometimes malfunctioned, complicating the remediation process. For instance, errors continued even after corrections, requiring us to extract pages and face more issues. We adjusted the structure, corrected tags manually, re-embedded fonts, and re-added the PDF/UA identifier. Whew!

Remember, I can be your accessibility expert. For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel: The Accessibility Guy on YouTube. Subscribe for regular updates!