Design Domination Podcast Episode #197: How to Check If a PDF Is Accessible: Complete Guide for Designers

Music: https://www.bensound.com

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I recently polled designers on my email list and asked them for their burning accessibility questions, so that I could address them in an episode, kind of like an “ask me anything” format.

I got some great questions, and a few of them warranted having their own episode. So here we are.

Today I am going to cover “How do I know for sure—how can I actually be confident—that my accessible PDFs are truly accessible?”

This is a really great question!

Stick around to find out 5 different ways for how to check if a PDF is accessible, so you can stop guessing and know your PDF is actually accessible, plus two things many designers do wrong when assessing a PDF for accessibility.

How Designers Can Make Sure Their PDFs Are Accessible

It’s important in this area of document accessibility work to make sure your PDFs are accessible, because it affects your business.

I mean, first off, a lot of designers have issues with confidence, and that affects how you show up in your marketing and how you price. I know, because I lived this for many years.

If you’re not confident, you will not market yourself well, you will not sound confident on sales calls, and that will make it less likely you get the work. You may also underprice your work on top of that, which can devalue it in the eyes of the client.

Also, many clients have legal requirements for this work, so it’s vital to make sure you know you are delivering what you are supposed to. You don’t want to lose sleep at night worrying about whether or not you met the client’s requirements and was the work done right.

So stop wondering once and for all if your documents are accessible. Let’s talk about several different important factors to determine if your documents are accessible or not.

1. Define “accessible.”

The first thing you need to do—at the start of every project—is define “accessible.” In other words, you have to know what “accessible” means to this client for this project. I say “for this project” because I have a lot of clients who aren’t the end client. They have different clients, and one project might be for client A and another for client B, and they may have different requirements.

Finding out what “accessible” means to each client sets the bar for how accessible a PDF needs to be. If you don’t know what their requirements are to begin with, how can you meet them?

It reminds me of the quote by Steve Maraboli:

If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?

For instance, you may have a client who calls for WCAG 2.0 AA as the standard they want to meet. You may have a client who needs to meet WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 AA.

I’ve also had clients specify both WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA. PDF/UA is more specific to PDFs than WCAG is.

I’ve also had a few clients who say they are looking to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, but when it comes to contrast, they want to adhere to the AAA level of conformance—just for that—which is stricter.

So “accessible” means different things to different clients.

2. Run and pass the Acrobat accessibility checker.

The second thing is that your PDF should pass the Acrobat accessibility checker at a minimum, and this is just a starting point.

I say “starting point” because the Acrobat checker is an automated checker, and it’s important to know that automated checkers aren’t the be-all, end-all for accessibility.

That’s because they cannot detect all potential accessibility issues, contrast, reading order, if the correct tag was used. Of some of the issues they can detect, they cannot tell if certain things were done properly, such as:

• Was that the right tag that was used?
• Is that Alt-text sufficient on that image? Is it correct?

Things like that.

I talked about the limitations of the Acrobat accessibility checker in episode 88. Be sure to check that out.

Now this might come as a surprise to you, but lots of documents can pass the Acrobat checker and be filled with accessibility issues.

It’s important to note, though, that every time you export to PDF from the source program, whether that’s InDesign or Word or something else, you will see certain errors after running the Acrobat checker, before you do any of the final PDF accessibility work. That’s always going to be the case even if you did all that you could do in the source program. So there is always more work to be done after the PDF passes the Acrobat checker.

But after you do make those final tweaks, the PDF should pass the checker, at least other than for table summaries. I actually turn that option off before running the checker.

But you still have to do other checks as well. So let’s get into them.

3. Run and pass PAC.

Another barometer for assessing whether or not a PDF is accessible is to run and pass the PAC checker. This is a much more comprehensive checker than the Acrobat checker. It looks under the hood at a lot more elements than the Acrobat checker.

Again, this is an automated checker, and automated checkers are not 100%. Again, they also cannot determine certain things, such as if the right tags were used or if the reading order or Alt-text is correct. Those always have to be manually checked.

It’s just another tool in your toolkit to help as part of the checking process.

After getting a PDF to pass the PAC checker, I download the report and send it to the client.

Note that the Acrobat checker also allows you to output a report, but it doesn’t mean much. I don’t bother with that one.

4. Perform manual checks.

It is absolutely necessary to perform manual checks of your PDFs. By that, I mean going through and actually inspecting the tags, the reading order, the Alt-text, any actual text that has been set, and so forth. There are more things to check too.

But no automated checker can tell if those things were done correctly.

5. Perform keyboard and screen reader checks.

You also want to perform checks with the keyboard and screen reader. Testing with the keyboard and a screen reader give you a good basis for testing. There are lots of assistive devices and software, and you simply won’t have access to them all.

The keyboard is important to test with, because many assistive technologies still make use of the keyboard. Beyond that, many people with fine-motor issues may not use a mouse and can only the keyboard.

When you are able to access the content by using the keyboard and not a mouse it is called “keyboard accessible.” OK, so keyboard accessibility is important.

A screen reader, which is one of several types of assistive technology, depends on keyboard accessibility.

Screen readers, such as NVDA or JAWS, will allow you to hear how some of the content in the PDF is voiced.

If you’re not used to how a screen reader voices certain content, you may be surprised. Some content:

• may be voiced completely differently than you expect it to,
• may not be voiced at all when it should, or
• may be voiced when it shouldn’t.

If something is voiced differently or not at all, that may change the meaning of the content, which would not be a good scenario.

If you use non-standard bullets, for example, they may voice as letters. Hearing letters such as “N” voiced before each bulleted item may not make sense to someone who cannot see the content, but hearing the word “bullet” before each list item would make sense and would be expected behavior.

Warning: The PDF/UA Stamp

Now, having said all this, I want to warn you about something, so it doesn’t trip you up if you see it.

Don’t ever assume that if you add the PDF/UA identifier to a PDF or if you open a PDF and see the PDF/UA identifier, that it is some stamp of approval of accessibility for the document.

When I first got into document accessibility, I thought this was a meaningful marker for a PDF. It’s not.

It makes the document look more official, sure, but it really doesn’t hold any weight. Anyone can add it at any time to the PDF. It can also be removed at any time.

So whatever you do, don’t open up a PDF, look for that icon and think, “Oh, this document has the PDF/UA identifier. It must have been checked and passed some tests and has been knighted as ‘accessible.’”

So there you have it—five ways to check if a PDF is truly accessible or not, starting with defining the standard for what is considered “accessible” and performing different types of checks, along with a warning.

How to Create Accessible PDFs From InDesign

If you’re looking to create accessible PDFs from InDesign and are ready to stop Googling and guessing and piecing together information from different sources, be sure to check out my Accessible PDFs From InDesign course. You’ll get the complete process for creating accessible PDFs from InDesign. Go to creative-boost.com/indesigncourse