Creating Accessible Documents

Instructions for creating accessible documents in different programs.

1 Microsoft Documents
2 Google Workspace
3 Apple
4 PDFs
5 Other options - our libraries and the internet
6 Web Pages

Consider our "Fast Five" essentials for preparing materials for your courses:

Microsoft Documents

Instructions for the Microsoft Office Suite

For Microsoft Office Suite documents such as those created with Word, Powerpoint, or Excel, we highly recommend the LinkedIn Learning course, Digital Accessibility for the Modern Workplace.

All Office Suite documents have an Accessibility Checker built-in. Go to the Review menu and select Check Accessibility.

Google Workspace

Use the Grackle plugin as the in-program accessibility checker for Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets.
Creating PDFs | Google Docs

Common Grackle Error

Chrome can get confused when there is more than one user logged in to a browser, and it causes add-ons to hang. Visit Grackle not responding for possible solutions.

Exporting directly from Google Docs to PDF is not your most accessible option.

The most accessible option is to export the document into Microsoft Word first, and then follow those steps to make your PDF accessible. However, you can make your Google Doc more accessible by using Grackle. Grackle is a plugin that acts as an accessibility checker.

Apple

Headings in Pages

Type the text you want into Pages.
Select a sentence/phrase that you want to become a heading.
Select Format.
Select the heading you want, such as the Heading 1 button.

PDFs

Creating Accessible PDFs on LinkedIn Learning
Use Acrobat's built-in Action Wizard [YouTube] and choose "Make Accessible"
Creating PDFs
View Adobe's article on Creating Accessible PDFs
See Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities

Instructions for Improving the Accessibility of an Existing PDF

Use SensusAccess

SensusAccess is an online service that converts text- and image-based documents into different accessible formats (searchable PDFs, audio, Braille, or e-text). It is available to all Swarthmore staff, students, and faculty with a Swarthmore College email address.

The quality of the converted document is highly dependent on the quality of the original document. For example, a clearly-structured Word document will yield a better result than a poorly-scanned PDF. See Using Word's Style Gallery to Create Structure in Your Document for more information.

Scanning tips: Make sure your scans can be seen by everyone

Consult this guide on high-quality scans from the University of Washington to understand what makes a scan able to be seen and read by most people. A high-quality scan contains

easily-readable text,
is free of marginalia,
and is not skewed.

To begin converting a document, go to the SensusAccess page, upload a file, and select the appropriate format.

Take advantage of SensusAccess from anywhere

You do not have to be on campus to take advantage of this service.

Use Adobe Acrobat

PDFs are notoriously difficult to make fully accessible; however, you can make improvements by using tools from within Acrobat.

Image-only PDFs

Many PDFs are not text based even though they contain text, but how do you know? One very quick way is to try to copy a few sections and paste those sections elsewhere. If you cannot copy parts of the page, you are likely dealing with an PDF that is a picture of text. When a PDF is a picture of text the information is not available to those who listen, particularly screen reader users.

Acrobat has a built-in tool to help called Scan & OCR. This tool will attempt to convert your image based document to a text-based document. I say “attempt” because there are many factors that contribute to inaccurate text conversions (see the Scanning tips sectiton above). To convert an image based PDF to text follow these steps:

Go to All tools
Choose Scan & OCR
Then Enhance scanned file
Choose All Pages from the drop down and make sure Recognize Text is checked

Acrobat has now done its best convert images of text to text. But how will you know if it was an accurate conversion? There are two ways, using Acrobat’s new Correct recognized text and by using the copy paste method again. We recommend using Acrobat’s new tool first, saving the document after corrections are made, then attempting the copy paste method. To use this new tool:

Go to Recognize Text
Correct recognized text
Make any necessary changes
Save the file
Do the copy paste check

For more information from Adobe, visit Create and verify PDF accessibility (Acrobat Pro)

Other options - our libraries and the internet

Take advantage of our librarians

Our librarians are well-versed in finding accessible content and can be very useful resources. Visit the library's research support page for more information.

Use the power of the internet

Another option—instead of fixing an existing PDF—is to use a web link to an HTML version of the document. Generally, HTML is one of the most accessible document formats.