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Creating accessible PDFs can be difficult and tedious. We strongly suggest making your source document as accessible as it can be if you're going to convert to a PDF.

Identify the Title in Properties

If you've authored your material in Word, you can use any save function to move a .doc(x) to a PDF and carry over many accessible properties of that file. Before you do this, make sure you've identified the Title in Properties. We use the Office 2019 Suite here at Swarthmore, and you can:

Mac

1. select File,

2. Scroll down and select Properties,

3. Choose the Summary tab,

4. Title your file using the Title field,

5. Click OK.

Windows

1. select File,

2. an Info screen will open.

3. Find the Properties section.

4. Title your file using the Title field,

5. Hit return or enter,

6. then Save the document.

See also: View or change the properties for an Office file | Microsoft Support

...

And then, you can save the Word document as a PDF in multiple ways and the Title will carry over.

• Use Adobe’s Word plugin to produce the PDF.

• Choose save as PDF from the File menu.

• Select Export and Create Adobe PDF from the File menu.

• Choose Save As from the File menu; select PDF from the drop down; and save.

See also: Creating accessible pdfs [LinkedIn Learning Video]

Common Pitfalls

• Thinking that the filename is the title. 

• Printing to PDF instead of saving as a PDF.

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