PDF Accessibility in Adobe Acrobat Pro

Table of Contents

What is Adobe Acrobat Pro?

Adobe Acrobat Pro is professional Portable Document Format (PDF) editing software that allows for the validation and remediation of properties, reading order, alternative text, tag structure, and form functionality—all required validation and remediation checkpoints to ensure PDF accessibility.

How do I use Adobe Acrobat Pro?

When you create an electronic document using an authoring tool that allows for accessible design, you can export to PDF and retain most of the necessary tag structure—making accessibility validation and remediation in Adobe Acrobat Pro relatively quick and easy. When you inherit a PDF, and the source document is unavailable, validation and remediation may take extra time and effort.

Checkpoints for Standard PDFs

1. Review and Repair Properties

   • Add a descriptive title and set the document language..

2. Run OCR (if necessary)

   • Run Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to recognize text in scanned and image PDFs.

3. Run Autotag (if necessary)

   • Run autotag to apply some preliminary tag structure.

4. Review and Repair Reading Order

   • Correct reading order using the Reading Order tool.

5. Review and Repair Alternative Text

   • Add or correct alternative text using the Reading Order tool.

6. Review and Repair Tag Structure

   • Edit tags with the Tags panel.

   • Remove or replace tags using the Reading Order tool.

   • Examine and repair table tags as needed using the Tags panel.

Additional Steps for PDF Forms

1. Review and Repair Field Properties

   • Set an accessible font and font size for all fillable form fields.

   • Include unique, descriptive tooltips that duplicate field names exactly.

   • Ensure that each form field as accurately set as required or not required.

2. Review and Repair Tab Order

   • Ensure logical tab order for each fillable form field.

   • Validate the position of each new field in the Tags pane.