UMass Boston

PDF Accessibility

PDF files are most frequently used when a book needs to be scanned or when the only available file from the library is in PDF format without an accessible Permalink. PDFs are often not accessible and can create barriers for many users. This includes people using screen readers, those with slower internet connections, mobile device users, and anyone needing to search through PDF files that are not tagged properly.

If you have no other choice but to use an existing PDF and you don’t have the corresponding Word document it was created from, making your PDF accessible is your only option.

Scanning a PDF in an Accessible Way

Use scanners with OCR technology to make your scanned documents accessible. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) turns printed text into digital text that can be searched and read by screen readers. Without OCR, your scans are just pictures of text that can’t be searched or read aloud by computers.

Find OCR scanners on campus using Umass Boston’s list of scanner locations. 

Testing PDF Accessibility

PDFs use hidden tags to organize the content. These tags help screen readers tell the difference between headings, paragraphs, lists, and other elements.

To quickly check if your PDF is accessible, try to highlight text. If you can select the text, it is likely accessible. If you can't select text, it needs fixing.

Another option is to use Adobe Acrobat’s accessibility checker. All UMass Boston students, faculty, and staff can download it for free from the UMass Boston Softwares page.

To run the checker in Adobe Acrobat:

  1. Click on Tools
  2. Select Accessibility 
  3. Click Full Check

The checker will find problems like missing tags, poor reading order, and images without descriptions. It will also show you how to fix these issues.

Even if the text is selectable, your PDF might still have issues like missing image descriptions or confusing reading order. Always run the full checker when making important documents.

Yuja Panorama PDF Remediation Tool

UMass Boston provides students, faculty, and staff with access to YuJa Panorama, a powerful tool for improving PDF accessibility. Panorama automatically identifies accessibility issues within PDFs and guides you through the remediation process. It can add proper tags, fix reading order problems and help you add alternative text to images.

For more information on how to access and use Yuja Panorama, visit UMass Boston’s YuJa Panorama webpage.

Creating PDFs from Microsoft Office

Making an accessible PDF from recent versions of Microsoft Office is simple. First, create your document following the tips on our Accessible Documents page. Then save it as a PDF. The accessibility features will transfer automatically.

All UMass Boston students, staff and faculty can download the latest Microsoft Office for free from the UMass Boston Microsoft Office webpage.

If you’re using an older version of Office, visit the NCDAE Cheat Sheets webpage for step-by-step instructions on creating accessible PDFs.