Creating PDFs

You can work with PDF documents or convert documents to and from PDFs in many ways. Adobe Acrobat is available for download for all Swarthmore community members, as well as installed on all of the computers in our public computing labs.

Important Note: Avoid creating forms using the tools noted below. PDF forms are very very difficult to make accessible. If you need to create an accessible form, please contact ITS Support for help.

Converting Documents to PDF

Adobe Acrobat Tips

Creating accessible PDFs doesn’t have to be difficult. We cover how to create accessible PDFs for everyday content in this section. However, if you are doing something more involved, we strongly recommend the LinkedIn Learning course titled Creating Accessible PDFs by Chad Chelius. LinkedIn Learning is a free learning resource available to everyone at Swarthmore.

You can work with PDF documents or convert documents to and from PDFs in many ways. Adobe Acrobat is available for download for all Swarthmore community members. It is also installed on all of the computers in Swarthmore’s public computing labs.

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility: Considerations

Fewer accessibility errors occur when one creates the document in Microsoft, runs the Accessibility Checker and then Save As…PDF.

Important Note: Avoid creating forms in using the tools noted below. Creating accessible PDF forms can be extremely challenging. If you need to create an accessible form, please contact ITS Support for help.

There are several elements in PDFs that are required to make PDFs accessible. These include:

• Preparing the original document, regardless of the tool you use (e.g. Word, Sheets, scanned document) for optimal accessibility.

• Ensuring text is text and not a picture of text. To test this, copy a few sections of what should be text and paste it into a simple text editor such as Notepad. See: Quickly Check a Scan Using Copy/Paste.

• Providing tags or structure.

• Providing meaningful alternative text for all images that are not marked as decorative.

• Testing reading order.

• Providing a title in the metadata. See: Changing the title of an Adobe PDF in ITS’ Solutions.

• Identifying the global language of the material in the metadata. See: Changing the global language of an Adobe PDF in ITS’ Solutions.

You can check each of these individually, or you can use one of Acrobat’s built-in tools to help. The tool we have found to be most helpful is the Make Accessible tool. For whatever reason, it is a little hard to find right out of the box, but you can easily find it using the following steps:

1. Use the Search tool. 

2. Enter Manage Actions.

3. Choose Make Accessible, 

4. and follow the prompts.

Scanned PDFs 

You may wish to scan material for a course or other purpose. Follow the steps on the University of Washington’s Creating High Quality Scans to prepare the material. There is a direct correlation between the quality of the document to be scanned and the accuracy of the conversion to text.

Quickly Check a Scan Using Copy/Paste

To quickly double check the quality of a scan, 

1. choose 2-3 different pages or areas of the PDF, 

2. copy each page or area,

3. and paste that content into a text editor like Notepad or Word.  

4. Evaluate: How accurate is the paste? If there is fewer than one error per paragraph, you have a good scan.

Making PDFs Accessible

Add additional attributes to the PDF

The next step is to add additional attributes to the PDF to help increase the level of accessibility. Use Adobe Acrobat’s Make Accessible, which is found under Guided Actions.

•  Use Guided Actions under All tools. 

• If you do not see Guided Actions under All tools, use the search tool to find Manage Actions then choose Make Accessible.

1. Use the Action Wizard to select Make Accessible to automate many of the tagging processes. 

2. For scanned PDFs, use Scan & OCR to convert the document into a text-based PDF.

3. Use the Accessibility Check tool to identify and fix any remaining issues.

4. Use Tags to create an accessible reading order. 

5. Add alternative text for images by right-clicking the image and selecting Edit Alt Text.

6. Check and fix Reading Order. Reading order is particularly important and seems to often be illogical. For example, you might think that the first paragraph you see is what is read first, but this is not always the case. The only way to determine if the reading order is correct is to check it.

SensusAccess for Document Conversion

Use SensusAccess to convert documents to accessible formats like tagged PDFs, audio, Braille, or e-text. This service is useful when dealing with non-text-based PDFs.

Best practices for PDF accessibility

• Prepare source content: Prepare the original document, regardless of the tool you use (e.g. Word, Sheets, scanned document), for optimal accessibility.

• Avoid PDF Forms: Creating accessible PDF forms can be extremely challenging. If you need to create an accessible form, please contact ITS Support for help.

• Use HTML for Web Content: HTML is inherently more accessible than PDFs. If possible, provide content in an HTML format or offer a web version of your document.

Signing PDFs

You can easily add your signature to a PDF document or form. To view directions that include downloadable practice files, please visit Adobe's official documentation on how to fill and sign PDF forms. The directions for adding a signature are the same, even if the document you are signing is not a fillable form.

Adobe also allows you to have multiple individuals sign a PDF form with ease from the Adobe Document Cloud using Adobe Sign. For detailed instructions that include downloadable practice files, please visit Adobe's official documentation on how to get multiple signatures on a single document.

Insert New Text Into a PDF

1. Select the Tools menu.

2. Choose Edit PDF;

3. then choose Add Text.

4. Click and drag to define the width of the text block you wish to add. (Hint: For vertical text: Right-click the text box and choose Make Text Direction Vertical.)

5. You can change the text properties using the options under Format in the right pane.

6. Type your text.

7. To resize the text box, click and drag a selection handle.

8. To move the text box, place the pointer over the line of the bounding box (avoid the selection handles). When the cursor changes to the Move pointer (crossed arrows), click and drag the box to the new location. To maintain alignment with any other list items, press Shift as you drag.

Additional Resources

• Microsoft's Create Accessible PDFs

• WebAIM's Converting Documents to PDFs

• University of Washington - Creating High Quality Scans

• WCAG PDF Techniques

• Linked In Learning’s Creating Accessible PDFs

• LibreOffice's Universal Accessibility (PDF/UA)