documents

PDF Accessibility: The Tags Panel

careya2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:21:50 +0000

PDF Accessibility: The Tags Panel careya2 Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:21

The Tags Panel displays the primary structure of the document. While the Order Panel provides tools to restructure what content is grouped together, how it is labeled, and when it is read, the Tags Panel gives more granular control over the latter two aspects. The order of the tags is the reading order of the document, moreso than that displayed by the Order Panel, and each tag serves a specific semantic purpose (besides grouping tags like <Part> and <Sect>). Some of the structures formed by these tags require strict adherence to that structure; more information about them can be found on the Complex Tag Structures page.

Some important functions of the Tags Panel are:

Dragging and dropping content and tags to change the structure
Right Click > New Tag
Editing a tag's properties by Right Click > Properties
- Type allows you to change what tag is used
- The Actual Text field can be used to correct poorly scanned text
- Alternate Text can be provided for figures and formulae.
Right Click > Copy Contents to Clipboard can be useful for identifying and correcting poorly scanned text

While it can get tedious for longer documents, the best way to check over the tags is simply to select the first one and use the arrow keys to go through each tag that's present and check that it is in the correct order and is properly representing the content. You may find that the document is structured with many section tags. These don't have any semantic purpose, so their presence is not problematic, but it if they make it difficult to traverse the tags, you can pull the content out and delete them.

Tagging paragraphs

Paragraphs often get split across columns or pages, resulting in a halting of the reading in the middle of the paragraph. Thus, these should be combined such that each visual paragraph is contained within a single paragraph tag. Sometimes, paragraphs contain other content such as inline math or footnote references that require their own tags. In these cases, break the text using the order panel so that it can sit around the inline content and include them all in order in one <P> tag (see below example).

In extreme situations, preserving visual paragraphs in tag form may require the repositioning of other elements in the reading order. In one PDF we remediated, there was a paragraph that spanned three pages because each page also contained a large graph. The graphs were adjusted to sit elsewhere in the tags panel, after the paragraphs in which they were referenced, and the paragraph was combined into a single tag.

Footnotes

Footnotes are a curious case, as their usual reading flow for a sighted user does not quite match the experience of a screen reader user or anyone else navigating the document by keyboard. There is no definite standard on where they should be placed in the reading order, whether at the end of the page or read after the paragraph in which they are referenced. The Digital Accessibility Remediation Team (DART) uses the latter positioning when remediating PDFs, as it lends itself to a more natural reading order.

The superscript that refers to the footnote should be tagged as <Reference>, and the footnote itself should be tagged as <Note>.

Correcting Inaccurate Text

For some documents, particularly scans, the text recognized by the OCR may not match the text in the document. In these instances, you can use the Actual Text field in the tag's properties to provide accurate text. This can also be used to correct other elements like hyphens that are inserted as a consequence of line wrapping. These hyphens should be tagged as a <span> element, and the Actual Text should contain a soft hyphen character (U+00AD) to denote it as a connective element rather than a textual element.

Article Citation

The following articles were used as examples. Modifications to the PDF structure were made for illustrative purposes.

Souleiman, Y. (2021). Convergences and numerical analysis of a contact problem with normal compliance and unilateral constraint. African Journal of Mathematics and Computer Science Research, 14(1), 13-23.

This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0

Resource type

documents

PDF Accessibility

careya2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:16:04 +0000

PDF Accessibility careya2 Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:16

The PDF is a curious case for accessibility. On one hand, it has the potential to be a useful standard for both accessible reading and for printing. On the other, it is rarely utilized in an accessible manner and has many obscure issues and odd behaviors that can lead to problems.

As such, it is often much easier to make a Word document accessible than a PDF, so we encourage you to prioritize using Word documents, web pages, or Canvas pages over PDFs whenever appropriate. However, in a university context, readings such as articles and book chapters are often PDFs, so it's important to know how to convert an inaccessible PDF into an accessible one.

Utilize Course Reserves

When constructing your course, one resource that is invaluable for procuring accessible versions of readings is the Library's Course Reserves. Every PDF requested through this system is remediated by the Digital Accessibility Remediation Team (DART) to ensure that it complies with the relevant accessibility guidelines.

How PDF is Structured

Unlike Word, where the content and structure are one and the same, PDFs' content can be represented programmatically in a completely separate manner from the way it appears visually. A scanned book chapter may contain many pages of paragraphs, but may only be encoded as images in the PDF itself.

Accessibility in PDF revolves around matching the backend representation to the frontend content. To do this, PDF uses tags as semantic containers for its content, similar to how HTML is structured. These tags describe what kind of content they contain so that screen readers understand what is on the page. Their order also determines the order in which the contents are read by assistive technology or tabbed through if navigating with a keyboard. Thus, PDF remediation can be thought of as having two primary components, representation and reading order.

For proper representation, it's important to understand the main types of tags that are commonly found in PDFs. A selection of these are explained in the table below.

Tag(s)	Description
`<P>`	A paragraph tag, used for any body text
`<H1>`, `<H2>`, etc.	Headings of various levels, used to provide navigational structure to a document
`<Figure>`	An image, requires alternate text that describes its contents
`<Formula>`	Acts just like a figure, but conveys that it contains a formula.
`<Caption>`	Denotes text serving as a caption to a figure, table, etc.
`<Span>`	Inline text that differs from its surrounding text, has various uses
`<Part>`, `<Sect>`	Part and section tags are simply containers for organization of other tags
`<Note>`	Used to denote an endnote or footnote
`<Reference>`	A text citation that refers elsewhere in the document, like the superscripts referring to footnotes
`<Table>`, `<TR>`, `<TH>`, `<TD>`	Tags used for tables; see below
`<List>`, `<LI>`, `<Lbl>`, `<LBody>`	Tags used for lists; see Tables and Lists for more information

Remediation Process

Given PDF's complexity, there are likely a number of ways to approach making a document accessible, but over time we've found the following process to be the most thorough and straightforward.

Run the accessibility checker and, if needed, the Make Accessible tool.
Go through the document twice with the Order Panel.
- Initial tagging pass
- Reading order pass
Go through the Tags Panel to check for malformed structures and to combine tags if needed.
Add alternate text to images

Accessibility tools

Two important tools you'll need to use for checking PDF accessibility are the checker itself (part of the Accessibility tool) and the Make Accessible action in the Action Center tool. Both of these can be found under the Tools tab of Acrobat DC.

The accessibility checker will function much like those in Office, listing out common issues and highlighting them if they're clicked on. It also has a couple useful right click options, including Explain, which will pull up Adobe's help website to the description of the error, and Show in Tags Panel, which opens the Tags panel and selects the offending tag. When you run the checker, it will give you a dialog box of options. You can just leave the defaults applied and click Start Checking.

There will be two items that require a manual check in all documents. These are logical reading order, which is discussed on the Order Panel page, and color contrast. Color contrast will generally not be an issue given most readings are black and white, but in color documents, you may want to check that it is sufficient and edit the colors if needed with the Edit PDF tool.

Note: The Edit PDF tool should be used sparingly and early in the process, as it can cause issues with the PDF content potentially not being at parity with the tagged representation. It can also pose copyright issues if significant changes are made. Generally if these are made for the purpose of ensuring accessibility, this is acceptable, but changes that alter the primary content or for another purpose beyond accessibility may be copyright violations.

If the document you're using was prepared in a way that included tags, you may be able to move on to the Order Panel passes, but if you get an untagged PDF error (or if you run into significant issues with the existing tags) you'll need to run the Make Accessible action. This tool takes you through a series of dialog boxes to prepare the document for remediation.

A description dialog allows you to provide metadata about the document. The only necessary field is the Title, which will be read by a screen reader when the document is focused.
The Recognize Text box will appear. Ensure that the document language listed matches the document.
Acrobat will ask if you want to detect form fields. Unless your document is a fillable form, choose No, Skip this Step.
Ensure that the reading language listed matches the document as before.
If Acrobat recognizes any images in your document, it will allow you to enter alt text. It's common for the initial recognition to either catch additional elements that shouldn't be images or to ignore images that are present, so it is often better to just choose Save and Close, as you can return to this after you've checked over the structure.
It will run the accessibility checker as described above.

Note: Resolving all of the accessibility checker does NOT necessarily mean that your document is accessible. It only can check if certain prescribed structures are correct. It cannot check whether those structures are accurate depictions of the document's content. Thus, it is important to understand the remediation processes detailed on the following two pages.

Remediating the document

The use of the Order and Tags panels are significant topics by themselves, so they have their own pages dedicated to that information:

Using the Order Panel
Using the Tags Panel

Adding alternate text

There are two options for adding alt text to an image. The first is to right click any of the alt text errors in the accessibility checker and choose Fix, which will open a small dialog that allows you to jump between images and provide each of them alt text. The second is to right click the tag in the Tags Panel and open the properties menu. There, you will be able to add your alternate text in the respective field.

Remediation assistance

If you have any further questions about PDF, feel free to reach out to the Office of Digital Accessibility.

Resource type

documents

Microsoft Word Checklist

ewelc05s — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 21:01:39 +0000

Microsoft Word Checklist ewelc05s Thu, 03/27/2025 - 16:01

Microsoft Word includes features that can assist with creating more accessible documents. This checklist provides guidance and resources to develop accessible content with the Microsoft Word desktop application.

Considerations

Use the Microsoft Accessibility Checker while you work.
Automated checkers identify most accessibility errors, but manual review is always recommended. For example, MS Accessibility Checker may verify that alt-text is used, but does not verify the text used accurately describes the visual represented.
Office 365 is available for UIS faculty, staff, and students.

Headings and Subheadings

Headings and Subheadings divide course content and help users navigate and locate content within a document.

Start your document with Heading level 1.
Ensure Headings follow a sequential and descending order.
Avoid skipping Heading levels.

Example of Correct Heading Hierarchy

H1: Main Title of Page
H2: Major section of content
H3: Subsection of Heading level 2.
H3: Subsection of Heading level 2.
H4: Sub-sub section of Heading level 3.
H4: Sub-sub section of Heading level 3.
H2. Major section of content.
H3: Subsection of Heading level 2.

Learn more: Accessibility Bytes: Document Headings

Apply Styles for Headings

Styles define heading formatting characteristics such as heading level, font, size, color, and text indentation.

Format with a consistent heading style.
Color should not be used for emphasis alone.
Author with built-in styles, modify, or create a new style.

How to Add a Heading Style

Type or highlight the text to apply the heading style.
On the Home tab, in the Styles pane, select a style by hovering over the style.
The formatting characteristics of the selected style will be applied to the text.

Learn more: How to customize or create new styles with Microsoft Word and Improve accessibility with Heading Styles.

Lists

Use a built-in list to format list items.

Avoid using open-face bullet icons, reformat with closed bullet icons.
Make sure there are no extra spaces between list items.
Use a bullet list for unordered items and a numbered list for ordered items.

Numbered Lists

Select the text for the numbered list.
On the Home ribbon, select the numbered list icon.

Bullet Lists

Select the text for the bullet list.
On the Home ribbon, select the bullet list icon.

Learn More: MS Word Lists

Author with Meaningful Alternative Text for Images, Logos, and Charts

Alternative text also referred to as alt-text is text used to convey the context of the visual represented.

Keep alt-text short and meaningful to describe the context of the visual.
Do not include the words “image of” or “picture of” in the alt text as screen readers will provide this information.
Provide the words, logo, illustration, and painting in the alt text to describe the visual represented.
Consider a supporting document for complex visuals such as maps, graphs, and charts.

How to Add Alt Text

Right-click the image and select Edit Alt text.
Type the descriptive alt text in the Alt Text pane.

Learn More: Section 508: Authoring meaningful alternative text and Add an alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, or other object

Author with Descriptive Links

Authoring with meaningful descriptive links will provide the context of the link referenced.

Provide a meaningful description of the hyperlink, specifying the purpose.
Avoid non-descriptive verbs such as “click here” or “more information”.
Test the descriptive link to make sure that the link will direct the website.

How to Create Descriptive Links

Copy and paste the resource link into the document.
Highlight the link, right-click, and select Link.
The Insert Hyperlink dialog box will appear, enter the descriptive text into the “Text to Display field”.

Learn More: Section 508 Descriptive Links and Hypertext and Create Accessible Links in MS Word

Color Contrast

Color contrast is the difference in hue between colors. Font and graphics with high-contrast colors will increase user readability.

A color contrast ratio of 4:5:1 is acceptable for regular text.
A color contrast ratio of 3:1 is acceptable for Large text, which is defined as a 14-point font.
Toggle High Contrast Colors in the Font pane of MS Word and select a color.

How to Check for Color Contrast

Go to Web Aim Color Contrast Checker
Select the color on Foreground.
Next, select the dropper tool and a circle will appear.
Select the foreground text on the document.
Repeat this process for the Background.
The result will populate with a contrast ratio and pass or fail rating.

Learn More: Web Aim Color Contrast Checker

Tables

The most accessible table structure is a simple table. A simple table structure has a single header and column row.

Add a header row.
Avoid nested, merged, and blank cells.
Use tables for data, not for layout.
Consider revising a complex table into a simple table.

Learn More: Microsoft Word Format a Table

Accessibility Checker

Improve accessibility by using the accessibility checker.

The accessibility checker categorizes content as errors, warnings, and tips.
Use the accessibility checker when creating, editing, and revising content.
Check all content manually to verify that the content is accessible.

Accessibility Review Checklist

Heading Levels: Are headings in the proper reading order?
Heading Styles: Are styles consistent and is formatting applied using styles?
List: Are lists formatted using built-in lists?
Alternative Text: Is meaningful alt-text applied to visuals?
Descriptive Links: Are text descriptions added to links?
Descriptive Links: Do the links direct to the website?
Color Contrast: Are colors that have high contrast used?
Tables: Does the table include a simple layout?

How to Use the Accessibility Checker

Select, the Review tab and select Check Accessibility.
Next, the Accessibility Checker pane will open.
Review the errors and warnings that are provided and fix them accordingly.

Learn More: Microsoft Accessibility Checker

Saving and Sharing Documents

Add metadata, which is information that describes the document properties such as the title and author.

How to Add a Title

Select the File tab and then select Info.
Under Properties, type a title in the Title field.

How to Save As a PDF

Save the original file, as a copy.
Select File, Save As, and then select Browse.
Select PDF in the Save As dialog box, under Save As Type.
Next, select Options to open the Options dialog box.
In the Options dialog box, check the “Document structure tags for accessibility” checkbox.
select Ok.

Learn More: Saving an accessible PDF in Microsoft Word

Resource type

documents