Adobe’s Acrobat Pro XI Accessibility Techniques
for MHCC Staff and Faculty
This guide is intended to train only on the basic accessibility functions and features of Adobe Acrobat
Pro XI. For information beyond accessibility techniques, the help manual can be accessed at Adobe
Acrobat XI Quick Start Guides ( http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/quick-start-guides.html ) A complete
Acrobat Reference Guide is also available.. (https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/acrobat_reference.pdf )
If you are converting documents developed in Word 2010, Word 2007 or OpenOffice, you may want to refer to the PDF
Accessibility Document Conversion at WebAIM. WebAIM also covers Acrobat XI Accessibility Tools as well as Creating
Accessible Forms.
Table of Contents
Word did not SAVE all the accessibility? ...................................................................................... 2
Acrobat Pro XI Menu Bar, Toolbar and Toolsets .......................................................................... 2
Navigation Pane .............................................................................................................................. 6
Accessibility Tools – Easiest Way to Start.................................................................................... 8
Add Document Description ............................................................................................................ 8
Recognize Text General Setting .................................................................................................... 9
Detect Form Fields ........................................................................................................................ 9
Set Tab Order Property.................................................................................................................. 9
Set Reading Language .................................................................................................................. 9
Add Tags to Document .................................................................................................................. 9
Set Alternate Text ........................................................................................................................ 10
Run Accessibility Checker ........................................................................................................... 11
Common Document Areas Checked ........................................................................................... 13
Accessibility Permission Flag ....................................................................................................... 13
Image Only PDF .......................................................................................................................... 14
Tagged PDF ................................................................................................................................ 19
Logical Reading Order ................................................................................................................. 20
Primary Language ....................................................................................................................... 20
Title .............................................................................................................................................. 21
Bookmarks ................................................................................................................................... 23
Color Contrast.............................................................................................................................. 24
Read Out Loud............................................................................................................................... 25
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Word did not SAVE all the accessibility?
A cautionary note with Word documents converted to PDF. Unfortunately, the “Save As” and the
“Print As” functions in Word do not always transfer all of the accessibility components from Word into
PDF. Be sure to use the Export function in Word to maintain the accessibility integrity of the
document. Refer to the MHCC Accessibility Instructions for Word 2013 in PDF on the Accessible Etext Resource page.
Acrobat Pro XI Menu Bar, Toolbar and Toolsets
When opening up Adobe Acrobat Pro XI for the first time, you are likely to encounter the Default
Toolbars. This section is only for orientation purposes and it is not needed for accessibility
techniques.
At the top of the tools, are the standard Menu Bar functions, File, Edit, View, Window and Help. The
Menu Bar can be opened and closed by pressing the F9 key on the keyboard.
Menu Bar List of Functions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
File: Open, Create, Save, Send, Print and the file properties.
Edit: Copy, Paste, Snapshot, Find and Preferences.
View: Tools, Zoom, Read/Screen Mode and Read Out Loud.
Window: Layout options.
Help: Help, About, Improve, Registration, Online Support & Repair. (Please Note, the Help and
Support functions of Acrobat Pro XI are not the easiest to navigate at this point. The better
option is to refer to the Quick Start Guide.)
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The second tier consists of icon buttons on the Toolbar.
These next icon buttons are the commonly used tools.
The last two buttons to the right of the toolbar are the Customize Tool Set and the View File in
Read Mode.
If you click on the Read mode, you lose easy access to the Toolbar but you
can quickly revert back to Toolbar mode by pressing the Esc key.
If you are in Read Mode, you can have access to a tool bar at the bottom of the screen IF you move
your mouse over the bottom of the Acrobat Pro window. The bar will look similar to the picture below.
To the right of this Read Mode toolbar, you will note a “house” icon. Click on that house to return to
the main toolbar. Another way to return to the Toolbar Mode is to press “Esc” on the keyboard
(usually located in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard).
Before moving to the third tier of icon buttons on the toolbar, let’s review the icon options displayed on
the left hand column of Acrobat Pro. This section is also known as the Navigation Pane. When more
functions/options are opened or used in Acrobat Pro, more icons will appear in this pane.
The top icon is for the Thumbnails of the PDF.
The next icon down is the Bookmarks that may be added in the PDF at creation.
The third icon is the list of attachments which may have been included with the PDF.
The fourth icon is the signature verification that may have been added when the PDF
was created.
Returning to the Toolbar, the third tier contains the Page Navigation buttons: Previous page, Next
page, Page numbers, Selection Tool, Moving/Pan (Hand) Tool, Zoom out, Zoom In, Zoom percent, Fit
to Width of Window and Fit Page to Window.
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The last three buttons located in the third tier on the right
are: Tools, Fill & Sign, and Comment.
Comment will bring up Annotation options,
Drawing Markups, Review and Comments List.
The most commonly used is the Annotations
for sticky notes, highlighting text, edit
comments and attaching (to name a few).
The Fill & Sign will bring up a list of tools
devoted to project, along with Signature
options and working with certificates. These
are more for collaborative tasks.
The Tools button will be used the most. It
contains your Toolset. The first typical
sections (but yours may be different) are the
Content Editing, Pages, Interactive Objects,
Forms, Action Wizard, Text Recognition and
Protection. This is also known as the Default
Toolset.
Now you can start to incorporate other sections
into your toolset. Directly under the Comment
button is a little Page icon with upside down
triangle. This is the Show or Hide Panels.
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A dropdown window opens. You can select the
tool sections that you will use the most.
Personally, I only use six sections: Content
Editing, Pages, Interactive Objects, Action
Wizard, Text Recognition and Accessibility.
Click on the sections you want in your Toolset,
including the Action Wizard, Accessibility and
possibly the Text Recognition sections.
One more feature you might want to do is to
expand your Quick Toolbar options with tools
that you use the most.
Click on the Customize button and select
Manage Tool Sets.
The Manage Tool Sets window will pop open.
Select Default Tools and click Edit button.
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I wanted quick access to the Accessibility
section in the Tool set so I will use that to
demonstrate how to add tool icons to the Quick
Toolbar.
1) Click Accessibility in the left hand
column, Choose Tools to Add:
2) Click the Add to Quick Tools Toolbar
button.
3) Click the Save button.
Now, in the second tier toolbar, I have accessibility options for easy access.
Remember, the options are yours to select. This example was my preference.
This Menu Bar, Toolbar and Tool Set section is only for orientation purposes and not for accessibility
purposes. To learn more about Tool Sets in Acrobat Pro XI, review the What's New in Acrobat Pro X,
(http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/WS4bebcd66a74275c320243650128f5f4e305-8000.html ) If you
have questions about the workspace environment, you can refer to pages 10 through 16 on the
Acrobat Reference Guide. (https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/acrobat_reference.pdf )
Navigation Pane
When editing a PDF, a good deal of time will be spent in the Navigation Pane.
To open this now, click View in the Menu Bar, select Show/Hide, select Navigation Panes and the
section that will pertain to the type of editing you will be working on.
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The options are Accessibility Checker, Articles,
Attachments, Bookmarks, Content,
Destinations, Layers, Model Tree, Order,
Thumbnails, Signatures and Tags. Another
way to open or close the Navigation Pane is to
press the F4 on the keyboard.
Depending upon which tools or features you
may have used in Acrobat Pro, you might see
some or all of these icons in your Navigation
Pane.
- Page Thumbnails
- Bookmarks
- Articles
- Destinations
- Accessibility Checker
- Attachments
- Layers
- Signatures
- Content
- Order
- Tags
- Model Tree
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Accessibility Tools – Easiest Way to Start
Select/open Action Wizard under Tools in the
Tools Pane (right side of the window).
Under Actions select Make Accessible.
A panel will open with a Start button. By
clicking on this start button, you will begin on
the series of steps needed for accessibility in
PDFs. As each action is performed, it will be
checked off the list.
As you scroll down the three sections of 1.
Prepare, 2. Set Language & Tags, and 3. Run
Accessibility Check, you will note the various
steps that the software will want to accomplish.
At any point, you have the option to Stop, or
cancel to individually select which options you
want to perform.
The screenshot to the far right is an example of
accomplished tasks to a point of stopping with
a Resume option.
Next, let’s look at each option window as it pops up.
Add Document Description
This option allows you to add the Title which is
very important for accessibility. If the title
transferred over from a Word document, you
should uncheck the field “Leave As Is.” You
may fix the title, if necessary. Leave the Title’s
“Leave as is” unchecked. Complete the
remaining fields as you feel necessary or leave
them blank. Then click OK. Additional Title Info
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Recognize Text General Setting
If the PDF was created from an accessible Word document, this step is not necessary.
There are three PDF Output Styles. The
default is Searchable Image. Change the
option to ClearScan for a better “reflow” of the
material. Downsample recommendation is 600
dpi (dots per inch) however, this may increase
the size of the PDF. If you need to
downsample due to size constraints, do not go
lower than 300 dpi. Then click OK.
Detect Form Fields
If your document does not contain any fillable form fields, you may skip this step by selecting “No,
Skip this Step.”
Set Tab Order Property
The Tab Order option does need not any additional information and will be done automatically, if
checked.
Set Reading Language
If the overall language is English, click OK.
Otherwise, open the dropdown language
window to find the predominant language. Any
PDF that has more than one language may
need extra attention for accessibility. Then
click OK.
Add Tags to Document
Adding tags is another automatic step that will not need additional input.
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Set Alternate Text
This step will search for images in the
document that have not been tagged with alttext. WARNING! This can be a bit tricky if the
wrong information was used for the alt tags.
Badly described images are the same as
inaccessible. After the process is done, you
may want to do a follow-up check to ensure
that the correct alt-text tags are associated with
the images. It’s a very easy step to perform.
After the software identifies any images that do
not contain alt-text, it will allow you to navigate,
using the Left and Right arrow buttons in the
pop-up window, through the images to give
you the opportunity to describe them or mark
them as Decorative. There were a lot of
images that needed to be fixed in the example
document.
One way to check on any alt-text descriptions
is to open the PDF in Read Mode. Move the
cursor over any images in the PDF. A popup
text bubble should display the alt-text
description. If no bubble shows up, then there
may not be an alt-text description for that
image. If the description is not adequate, you
should change the alt-text for that image.
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Run Accessibility Checker
When all the “Make Accessible” tasks
are accomplished, the Accessibility
Checker will open up. The default
options will provide the most thorough
check possible. It should be noted that
the Check Options categories for
Document, Page Content, Forms,
Tables and Lists are related to tags
to be discussed later in this guide. As
with all the other tasks, the
Accessibility Checker can be run
independently.
After the Accessibility Checker has finished, a
list of issues will open in the left hand panel of
the PDF’s window.
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To access the details of the issues, click on the
“+” (plus) to the left of the category issue. As
we begin to see, not all portions were
automatically assessed for accessibility.
Logical Reading Order and Color Contrast will
need additional checking in the PDF.
The obvious need for Bookmarks and
Alternative Text descriptions are noted. Look
through the example list illustration the right to
find other issues that the checker encountered.
After looking at the Accessibility Checker
illustration, you may have noticed that under
Tables, the Headers failed, under Lists, the list
items failed and under Headings, the
Appropriate nesting order failed.
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Common Document Areas Checked
The Accessibility Checker Panel to the left hand side of the document, may indicate up to eight
potential issues to be addressed. We will step through each of these potential issues. The Options
Menu will provide the following options: Fix, Pass, Fail, Skip Rule, and Explain. The most frequent
option will be to select Fix and then follow the steps provided. If you are not certain what the
message means, you may select Explain to access an online description of the issue and option.
As each issue is repaired, the Error
icon will change to a Check
icon, the wording will change
from “Failed” to “Passed,” while the font will change from bold to normal.
As found with most features in Acrobat, there is
a second way to access some of the options
found in the menu. While the cursor is placed
over the “X,” Right-click on the “X” to open a
condensed menu and select Fix.
Accessibility Permission Flag
This section of the checker verifies whether there are security/password settings which might prevent
a screen reader from accessing the document. When Fix is selected, the document properties for the
security will open so that changes can be made to the settings.
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Image Only PDF
This section will advise if the PDF contains non-text images of inaccessible pages. If Fix is selected,
the Recognize Text – General Settings option will open. Change the PDF Output Style to
“ClearScan” and click OK. After the text is recognized, verify that that conversion from the image to
text is accurate. Highlight the text in the document, Click Edit in the Menu Bar, select Copy (Ctrl + C),
and then open a blank Notepad (text file) or blank Word document to Paste (Ctrl + V) the clipboard
text into the empty file to see if the converted text is legible and accurate.
As you may note from the example above, this text conversion may need a little editing. It should
never be assumed that the text recognition will always be accurate.
Fix with Content Edition Options
Open the panel for Content Editing to select
Edit Text & Images. Near the bottom of the
panel is the option to Outline Text and
Images. Check that Outline option to turn it
on. The page of the document where text or
images are available will now contain light gray
boxes around each section of content. When a
section is selected, it will change to a blue box
surrounding the text..
Before actually editing the PDF, you should save it under a different name and open it in Adobe
Reader to get a good sense of what will need to be fixed. Sometimes it will be obvious, but others
may not be obvious. When the page is opened in Reader format, click on Edit in the Menu Bar,
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Select All (Ctrl + A), then click on Edit again, and Copy (Ctrl + C). Now that the page is copied into
the clipboard, you can insert that page into a Notepad or Word document. .
What you can see from the copy and paste from the PDF to the Notepad, that the text is not in the
correct reading order and that some of the text was poorly recognized. To fix this, return to the
Acrobat Pro to edit the content. As the words are corrected, the format option may need to be
opened to fix the font size and spacing.
open more format options.
Touch Up Reading Order
After the text is fixed, the reading order will
need to be corrected. Select Accessibility
from the Tools on the right panel. In the
dropdown panel, select Add Tags to
Document, then select Touch Up Reading
Order.
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Click on the plus button to
A Touch Up Reading Order window will pop
open. In the Touch Up window, click the Show
Order Panel button (near bottom of window) to
open the Order panel to the left of the
document.
In the Order panel, a list of tagged items will
be displayed.
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Right-click on the tagged option in the Order
panel to open more options.
If the order cannot be easily corrected from the Order Panel, another option is to open the Touch Up
Reading Order window again and click the Clear Page Structure button on the left bottom of the
window. You will be asked if you want to delete the current structure. Click Yes to continue.
This will remove all layers so that the text areas can be defined by drawing rectangles around the
content and then clicking on the appropriate button.
Using the mouse place the cursor at the top left corner of the text, hold down the left mouse button
while dragging the mouse/cursor across the text to be tagged for reading order. When the mouse
button is released, a light blue series of boxes will surround the text.
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After the text has been selected with the
rectangle, click on the button associated with
the type of content that was selected. In this
case, it was Text.
Now the text will be numbered and highlighted
in a gray box.
Proceed to the next section of text to be tagged
and do it again. Don’t be surprised if the
reading order changes.
WhenTagging for reading order is done this way, you may notice the reading order is changing in the
Order panel as well as on the PDF page that is being edited.
To move the order around, use the mouse to click on the numbered item in the Order panel. Hold the
mouse button down while dragging the text to the correct reading order. Some sections of similar type
may group together. Note the difference in reading order between the first reading order to the
changed reading order in the two examples below.
Once the reading order is correct, you can go back to the Content Editing option to fix the spelling.
The reading order in PDFs created from images can be the most difficult to fix. While this is not the
most ideal way of fixing the reading order in a PDF. It may be the only way to correct the order from a
pre-existing image of text in Acrobat Pro. Having good quality images will help make the process
easier.
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Tagged PDF
If the Tagged PDF has failed in the
Accessibility Checker, that may be due to the
PDF being an image document. If the Text
Recognition option has already been fixed, you
may need to fix the tagged areas. Using the
mouse, right-click on the Tagged PDF item in
the Accessibility Checker panel to fix the issue.
In the left most column, near the bottom of
icons, is a Tag. Click on that icon to open the
Tags panel to see how the tags were applied to
the PDF.
Or click on the Order icon that looks like a Z on
top of four squares.
These can be fixed and rearranged using the same techniques described in the Fix Reading Order
and Content Editing sections previously described in the Image Only error section.
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Logical Reading Order
This issue will require a manual check of the document for the logical reading sequence of the text in
the document for each page by using the Tags and Order functions. The steps for this are described
in the Image Only error section.
Primary Language
If this issue failed, use the mouse to right-click on the issue to open the Fix option.
The Set Reading Language window will open to allow you to select the correct language and click OK
button.
Add Languages by Content
Additional languages may be set for specific portions of the document . Click on the Content icon in
the far left colum. It will resemble a page with a top corner folded.
After the Content panel is open, select the
page and the container with the text language
to be redefined. When the section is clicked, it
will be displayed in the PDF page selected.
Now right-click on the container to select
Properties.
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The Object Properties will open in a new window. Locate and open the dropdown Language
option, to select the Language for that section of text. Click the Close button. This step may need to
be repeated for each section containing a language that is different than the primary language of the
PDF.
Title
The title will frequently fail the accessibility check, even if the title was defined in the original Word
document. This is easy to fix.
On the title issue, right-click to open the Fix
option.
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The Description fields may open in a new
window.
If the Title is filled in and correct, uncheck the
“Leave As Is” box, then click the OK button. If
the Description window does not open, the
Title field was automatically established from
Word document’s title.
If the Title is empty, uncheck the “Leave As
Is” box to open the Title field. Type the Title
into the textbox and click the OK button.
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Bookmarks
If the PDF is only a few pages long, this issue will usually pass. Long PDF documents may fail the
bookmark issue. A bookmark is a link within a PDF that is associated with a specific section and
page. If the document originated as a Word document, the export option can allow Headings to be
defined as bookmarks.
To create bookmarks in the PDF, click File in the Menu Bar, select Properties.
In the Document Properties window, select the
Initial View tab.
Select the following options
Navigation tab: Bookmarks Panel and Page.
Page layout: Single Page or Single Page
Continuous.
Windows Options to Show Document Title.
After completing the Accessibility Checker, the
bookmarks may still fail. Right-click on the
bookmarks issue to fix. The Structure
Elements window will open. Depending on the
Structure options, you may select one or more
elements to be defined for the bookmarks.
Click the OK button.
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Acrobat Pro will evaluate the document for
potential bookmarks. The amount of time it
takes will depend on the size of the document
and the number of elements selected. In the
Navigation Pane, select the Bookmark Icon to
see where the bookmarks have been placed.
Editing of the bookmarks can be done at this
point.
Color Contrast
The last issue in the Documents issue list is for fixing color contrast issues.
This issue typically suggests a manual check. If the issue has failed, it is because the document
contains colors that are inaccessible to people who are color-blind.
To check the document for high contrast
issues, click Edit in the Menu Bar and select
Preferences (Ctrl + K). Click Accessibility.
Select Replace document colors and select
Use High-Contrast Colors. Choose a color
combination and click OK.
Now, in the Navigation Pane, select the
Content icon to give you access to the various
pages.
If you find pages where there is obvious
content, but no text is visible, then the contrast
settings are incorrectly set for the document.
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Once a PDF is saved in this manner, there is not an easy way to fix the contrast issues. The repair
would need to be done in the original document, whether that’s a Word document, HTML page or
other original document.
Read Out Loud
Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Pro have an audio
feature that can assist with checking accessibility.
While this is not a substitute to a Screen Reader, it can
help to hear how the page will sound.
To access Read Out Loud, click on View in the Menu
Bar and select Read Out Loud then Activate Read Out
Loud (Shift + Ctrl + Y).
After the option is activated, you should ensure that
your speakers are turned on as well as ensuring that
mute is not turned on in your audio/sound option.
Next, select the Read This Page Only (Shift + Ctrl + V)
to hear how that page will be read/heard.
If you are certain that text has been embedded on the page, but are not able to hear the document,
then there may be some sound issues in the settings.
One way to check those issues is to click Edit
on the Menu Bar and select Preferences.
In the Categories column, select Reading. You
may try some of the different reading options to
see if this helps with the reader feature.
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