You have returned to the top of the page and may restart browsing.
Skip Main Navigation
You have skipped the global top navigation and may now begin browsing the page.
  1. Home
  2. Accessibility
  3. PDF Accessibility

PDF Accessibility

Best Practices

  • Start with an accessible source document. Whether you start in Word, Google Docs, PowerPoint, or InDesign, we recommend making your source document as accessible as possible before converting to PDF.
  • When converting to PDF, use settings that retain tags and accessibility formatting. Avoid "Print to PDF" settings as they will remove your tags and accessibility formatting.
  • Does it really need to be a PDF? Consider if a PDF is really the best way to share the information. If your PDF is informational: consider sharing the content on a web page. It’s much easier to maintain and update web pages, and HTML is generally more accessible than PDFs. Your audience is also more likely to read a web page than to download and read a PDF, especially on mobile.

Getting Started

Section508.gov logo

Section 508 Accessibility Guides

The Revised 508 Standards include not just IT tools and systems, but electronic content such as documents, web pages, presentations, social media content, blogs, and certain emails.
Microsoft Accessibility Logo

Microsoft Accessibility Guides

Find resources for making your content accessible using Microsoft products.

Welcome to the PDF section of our accessibility guide. This guide is developed to help you get started with PDF accessibility, and will loosely work as a set of instructions to fix accessibility problems. 

To get started, first ensure you are using the correct version of Adobe Acrobat. For the purpose of accessibility, we will be using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. If you do not have a copy of this software, please download it here:

 
Download Adobe Acrobat DC
 

After you have Acrobat Pro DC installed on your machine, you will now need to open the document. One you have opened the document, you can run an accessibility scan on your PDF. To do this:

  1. On the right hand side of the screen, click Accessibility.
  2. From the new menu that will appear on the right side of the screen, click Full Check. Follow the prompts, and this will check