Design Domination Podcast Episode #192: 5 Tips for Creating Accessible PDFs Efficiently

Music: https://www.bensound.com

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If you’re new to creating accessible PDFs or if you don’t have an efficient process, then you may face certain challenges.

I’ve been creating accessible PDFs from InDesign since 2016. I’ve worked on:

• simple, mostly text documents;
• short, graphic-heavy documents;
• long, complex publications with hundreds of pages, hundreds of tables and images; and
• infographics created in InDesign.

So I’ve run into all kinds of scenarios and I’ve looked for better ways to do certain things—to save time and to make for a better client experience.

I am going to give you 5 tips creating accessible PDFs efficiently. You can apply most of these tips to any accessible document process—Word, PowerPoint, etc. But one of my tips is specific to InDesign.

1. Set Expectations About Your Accessibility Process

The first tip involves explaining your accessibility process.

I like to always advise the client of my accessibility work process. I do certain things throughout the process at certain times, but I only want them to approve certain things at specific stages for efficiency. This also sets expectations.

For instance, I let them know I am going to provide a visual proof for them to review. That’s whether I am doing the design work or remediating an existing file they provide.

I tell them to just check that everything is included and looks as it should. I also check it myself, of course, before I send it to them.

I let them know that certain things, such as Alt-text, hyperlinks and tags, can easily be changed later. But that the design, colors and text edits cannot. So that’s why it’s important for the visual look to get approved.

I also let them know that some accessibility work will not be done until they approve the final PDF proof. That’s when I will do the final PDF work such as scoping tables.

I say that because I’ve had a few somewhat accessibility-savvy clients come back with a report from the Acrobat checker, telling me that tables need to be scoped and this or that. And I’m like, well, yeah, but that isn’t getting done right now.

I don’t do any PDF work until the PDF has been approved and I know I don’t have to go back to InDesign.

If the client has any edits, we have to go. back to InDesign and do them and then re-export. We don’t want to spend time scoping tables or doing a few other things in the PDF, like fixups, until we know we are working on the final-final-final approved PDF.

I also don’t want them to waste time reviewing that level of detail when we’re not even at that stage yet.

So setting expectations is important.

2. Accessibility Check Your Design First

The next tip has to do with a design proof, if you’re creating the document from scratch and not remediating an existing one.

You should always do accessibility checks of your design—the visual design—before sending a proof to a client or coworker to review.

That’s because you don’t want whoever reviews it to see the design looking one way, then you perform the visual accessibility checks later in the process and potentially end up changing colors—or the design—in order to make it accessible.

There are so many problems that can occur if you don’t do this in the beginning of the process.

First off, you may end up having to revisit the design process. That means additional time may need to be added to the production schedule. The client or your place of work won’t be happy about that. Time is money.

Second, if you have to change colors in a design to something totally different or you have to lighten or darken colors to make it visually accessible…

Heck! You might even end up changing the design a bit to get it to have the look and feel that you want it to have and maybe not be so heavy on a certain color.

That would also mean that you need to send out yet another proof for review.

You also don’t want your client, coworker or boss to fall in love with the look of something that you cannot deliver on because it wasn’t visually accessible to begin with.

It also isn’t a good look for you as the designer. They may wonder why you didn’t do that to begin with, right? So don’t let that happen to you!

3. Easily Review Alt-text

The next tip involves checking Alt-text, and this is specific to InDesign.

A client or coworker will likely need to review the Alt-text on images in the document to make sure the Alt-text is correct and that the right Alt-text is on the right images. This is especially the case if you write any Alt-text or you modify any of it.

Sure, you could tell them to hover over every image in the PDF in Acrobat and look at the tooltips that appear. But that isn’t totally reliable because the Alt-text doesn’t always appear when you do that, like if an image is layered under another one, so you can only see the Alt-text of the image on the top layer.

You could also tell them to go into the tags tree in Acrobat and right-click every Figure tag to check the Alt-text. But that would be super time consuming and tedious! Not only that, but it doesn’t allow an easy way for them to give you any edits to the Alt-text that may be needed.

So this tip may just blow your mind. I’ve got a super easy method for you and for them!

That’s an InDesign script created by my friend Dax Castro. It’s called the Alt-text Extractor.

There is a trial version that you can try out before you buy. Trust me, you will want to buy this. It saves so much time and has so many benefits.

Let me show you where to install it and how it works.

You’re just going to copy the script over to the InDesign scripts folder, then Scripts and Scripts Panel, and then in Samples and then JavaScript.

Back in InDesign, let’s verify with this one particular image that there is no Alt-text on it. We’ll right-click or control-click the image and then under Alt-text Source > Custom, we see that that’s empty. There’s no Alt-text.

Now, to run the script, we’ll go to Utilities > Scripts > Application > Samples > JavaScript and then select the script. Just double click it. OK.

Then it tells us that the file was saved into the same folder where the InDesign document is. Then we need to open the file in Excel. It’s a TXT file, but we need to open it in Excel.

In Excel, the first column shows the image file name. The second column is the Alt-text (or lack thereof, if it’s blank), and the third column is the page number that the image is found on.

It not only saves time in getting the Alt-text all together in one place… I mean, can you imagine how long it would take you to copy and paste Alt-text from a long document with tons of images?

But the other thing is that InDesign doesn’t spell check Alt-text. Exporting it like this gives you an easy way to do that.

You can also use this script for Alt-text that needs to be translated. I just used it in a document for this purpose. I just create another column for that language in the spreadsheet that gets exported.

The other side to this is, well, what if you or the client makes edits to the Alt-text in the spreadsheet? Will you have to copy and paste the modified Alt-text into every image again in InDesign?

Not if you use the companion script, the Alt-text Automator script. Then you won’t need to do that.

If you make edits to the spreadsheet and you don’t add another column or move things around, and you only edit the Alt-text, then you can use this script to re-import that Alt-text into InDesign in one fell swoop!

Before you use the Automator script, you want to either remove Alt-text where you don’t want it on a particular image or you need to add Alt-text to an image next to its file name in the spreadsheet where you want to put it. You can just modify it all right there and then just save it after you’re done making modifications to the Alt-text in the TXT file. Then you want to go back to InDesign.

Go back to your scripts and, this time, select the Alt-text Automator. Just double click it, choose the TXT file from the Extractor script and voilà!

You can check that it worked by going to any of the images that you adjusted Alt-text for in the spreadsheet and right- or control-clicking and going to Object Export Options and seeing the Alt-text there.

I said earlier you can add another column for another language if you have Alt-text that needs to be translated. You’d need to remove one of the columns to import the Alt-text properly. You’d just want to save a copy of the spreadsheet that contains one or more languages and then use a copy of the spreadsheet that contains a single language to import all of that information.

So if you have a document with two languages, let’s say, you would need to do one import per language.

Save yourself time and hassle and get these scripts. They will more than pay for themselves in one use. You will thank me later.

4. Send a Final Proof Before PDF Work

My next tip is to send the client a final (or final-final-final!) PDF proof to review before doing any work in the PDF.

You shouldn’t be working in the PDF if there’s a chance that you’re going to re-export the PDF from InDesign and then redo it again. That’s not efficient.

So I tell them not to go and run the accessibility checkers yet, because it is going to flag things at that stage in the process.

The other reason for sending a proof is to make sure that the file size and quality of the images—their resolution—are acceptable to them.

I’ve had clients with certain restrictions on file sizes. One client had restrictions that all PDFs could be a max of 15 MB, for instance. Others have said it needs to be small enough to email. Yet other clients want the images to be really sharp and file size is not an issue to them.

This can especially be an issue with longer documents with images but also with short documents with lots of graphics.

5. Perform PDF Work on the Approved PDF

My final tip is to do all of the necessary PDF work only after the final-final-final-final PDF was approved.

Also, I prefer to work from that same one that was approved too, because I know it’s the same file size and they approved that exact file—how it looked, size, image quality, etc.

Bonus Tip: Perform Visual Checks Against Approved PDF

I have a bonus tip for you and that is to check the PDF you worked on against the proof that they approved to make sure they match from a visual standpoint.

I always keep a copy even if I work on that same PDF, so I can refer back to what they actually approved.

I say this because I’ve seen weird things happen. It’s rare, but it has happened. I once noticed—after running an Acrobat preflight fixup—that a rule had disappeared from a page in the PDF. I mean, its existence was totally gone from everywhere in the PDF. I had to readd it.

A couple of times, I’ve had to reorder images or text after working in the PDF because it affected the look of things, such as text that was hidden under an image or an effect on an image that looked different.

Learn to Create Accessible PDFs From InDesign

OK, so there you have it—my tips for a smoother accessible document workflow.

If you want to get the full process for creating PDFs from InDesign, including understanding different types of disabilities, how to talk about accessibility, what to do in InDesign step by step, what to finish in the PDF and how to test it, then check out my Accessible PDFs From InDesign course.