Scope
This document will detail the steps necessary to make a catalog PDF accessible (ADA compliant).
These steps are not error proof. There are different ways that a PDF will fail certain tests, depending on the design of the documents. These steps will help us make the PDF as accessible as possible.
Purpose
We need to have ADA compliant catalogs on our website if we want to post our non-ADA catalog online.
Steps
These instructions are for MAC users. Windows users will have their options placed in different places, but overall, the steps remain the same.
- Open the file with Acrobat PDF Pro.
- Select All Tools > View More > Prepare for accessibility
- From the Accessibility Panel, click on Autotag Document and follow the prompts to complete the autotagging.
- From the Accessibility Panel, click on Reading options, and change Reading Order to Left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading order, then click Confirm.
- From the Accessibility Panel, click on Set alternate text.
- Go through each of the photos and give them correct alternate text describing what they are so people with visual impairment can hear the description on them.
- For images that are there only for decoration purposes, such as a small bullet, border, etc., check the box Decorative figure.
- From the Accessibility Panel, click on Accessibility check, then click Start Checking.
- On the right hand side, in the Accessibility Checker panel, click on each of the issues and address it.
- For issues that say Need manual check, just right click and click Pass.
- Right click on an issue and select Show in Content Panel will give more insights on what’s wrong. Sometimes there’s an empty elements. Sometimes there are tags wrapped in wrong tags, or empty tags that you can just delete. Sometimes there are links that are not annotated properly. Some of the issues have to be fixed inside the designer software itself. Your mileage might vary.
- Save the PDF.