Page Comparison

Determine Scope of Remediation Work

Before remediating an inaccessible PDF, it’s important to determine the scope of work in order to figure out which remediation methods and/or tools are most appropriate. Consider the following checkpoints:

1. Typography

   • Does the document employ serif fonts and avoid ALL CAPS (outside of explained acronyms)?

   • Is the font size 12 pt. font or larger for documents and 18 pt. or larger for presentations?

2. Color

   • Are headings, lists, and other structural tools used strategically such that color alone is never used to convey meaning?

   • Is there appropriate color contrast between foreground and background?

     • Input associated hex keys into a color contrast checker like the WebAIM Contrast Checker.

3. Properties

   • Is there a descriptive title, and is the document language correct?

4. Reading Order

   • Was the document scanned? Does it require optical character recognition (OCR)?

   • Is there logical reading order for all content?

5. Alternative Text

   • Is there appropriate alternative text for all non-decorative images?

6. Tag Structure

   • Are all headings, lists, links, tables, and table headers tagged accurately?

Repair Inaccessible PDFs and Re-publish

The following are several options for remediating PDFs with noted accessibility issues. As content editors are responsible for the accessibility of any content they make available on their public-facing sites, the IT Accessibility team OIT encourages departments to validate the content to which they link and correlatively reach out to associated pdx.edu site owners or external organizations if or when there are any accessibility issues.

Please refer to

Reporting External PDF Accessibility Issues for more information.

Repair in Microsoft Office/Adobe InDesign

If you have access to the original document, form, or presentation, the IT Accessibility team OIT strongly recommends recreating or repairing in Microsoft Office or Adobe InDesign. This is the most sustainable option in terms of long-term resource management, since any subsequent updates could be made to the original document, and republishing and validating as an accessible PDF would be relatively easy.

Please refer to

Creating Accessible

Documents and Forms for more information.

Repair in Adobe Acrobat Pro

If you do not have access to the original document, form, or presentation, and recreation in an accessible content authoring platform like Microsoft Office or Adobe InDesign in or Foxit PhantomPDF is unfeasible, PDFs may be remediated in either Adobe Acrobat Pro or our new self-service, semi-automated PDF remediation software, Equidox.

Info

Foxit PhantomPDF. Please refer to

our IT Accessibility Knowledge Base articles on

Repairing Inaccessible PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro

or Repairing Inaccessible PDFs in Equidox

for more information.

Note that PDF forms may only be created and validated for accessibility in Adobe Acrobat Pro

Please note that Adobe Acrobat Pro or Foxit PhantomPDF is typically required in order to generate fully accessible PDFs. Departments may purchase Adobe Acrobat Pro or Foxit PhantomPDF by submitting a software installation request.

Employ a Third Party PDF Remediation Service

If there are significant accessibility issues in your document, form, or presentation such that timely, in house recreation is unfeasible, it may be more cost and time effective to hire a third party for this work. There are several PDF accessibility service providers who offer paid accessibility training and remediation services.