Creating Accessible Documents and PDFs

Accessibility is crucial for ensuring that all users, including those with disabilities, can access your materials. The key is preparing the source content for optimal accessibility. What follows are key steps and tools for creating accessible documents across various platforms like Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, and Apple products.

Deepen your understanding: How people interact with content 

To really understand more about how different people interact with your content we suggest exploring Stories of Web Users from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Swarthmore’s Accessibility Awareness Training course is also available if you’d like a general understanding of physical and digital accessibility. Please reach out to accessibility(at)swarthmore.edu if you are unable to access the course.

General Guidelines for Accessibility

• Use Built-in Styles: Use built-in headings, lists, and styles in document editors (e.g., Word, Google Docs) to provide structure. See: In-program Styles in "Fast Five" Essentials to Preparing Materials.
• Accessibility Checkers: Use in-program accessibility checkers to identify most accessibility issues. See: Accessibility Checkers in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials.
• Convey Meaning with Words: Use descriptive text—especially for links, images, and headings—to ensure users can understand the content without visual cues. See: Convey meaning with words in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials.
• Alternative Text for Images: Provide descriptive alt text for images, charts, and other visual elements to ensure users in a low-bandwidth area, users with low vision, and blind users have access to the same material. See: Images Tutorial by the World Wide Web (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
• Headers and Footers: Use headers and footers for non-essential information such as pages numbers, repeating the document title, etc. Headers and footers can not always be accessed by assistive technologies such as screen readers.
• Important! Set the Language: Set the language of your document to ensure any spelling or grammar check uses the correct dictionary and any assistive technology reads in the correct language. See: Setting a language in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials.

PDFs

For accessibility help with PDFs, see the articles Make PDFs Accessible to More Students (Fundamentals) or Accessible Alternatives to PDF.

Microsoft Office Documents

• Install Microsoft Office 365.
• Check for Updates: If you have Microsoft Office 365 installed, ensure your version is updated by navigating to:
  • Help (in the top menu)
  • Check for Updates.
• Open the document you want to work on.
• Check Document Structure: Ensuring proper document structure is helpful for many and essential for those who use screen readers. Fortunately, this is very easy to check.
  • View (in the Ribbon)
  • Check Navigation Pane
  • Select the Document Map. This is the second tab on the left side of your document and it looks like a bulleted list.
  • If the Document Map has no contents or does not make sense as an overview of what is in each section of the material, use built-in headings, lists, and styles to provide structure. See: In-program Styles in "Fast Five" Essentials to Preparing Materials.

• Accessibility Checker: Run the Accessibility Checker and make any suggested fixes. Keep in mind that the Accessibility Checker does not check document structure. Important note: Always run it before exporting to PDF. See: In-program Accessibility Checkers in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials
  • Select the Review menu.
  • Run Accessibility Checker.
  • Fix any issues found.
  • Proceed to the metadata step.
• Set the Language: Add the document language to ensure documents are read in the correct language. See: Setting a language in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials.
  • Depending on what version of Microsoft Office you have there may be a couple of ways to set the language:
    • Method one
      • Select Tools from the top menu.
      • Select Language.
    • Method two
      • Select File from the top menu.
      • Select Options.
      • Select Language.
    • Method three
      • Navigate to the Review menu.
      • About the fourth section from the left is Language.
      • Select Language.
      • Select Set your proofing language.
      • Change the language for selected text or current document as needed.
      • If this is the language you regularly write and work in, select Set as Default.
• Metadata: Add a title and fill in properties to make your documents easier to find:
  • Select the File menu.
  • Select Properties.
  • Select the Summary tab.
  • Fill out the Title and any other relevant fields with proper information or metadata.
  • Select OK.

Exporting Microsoft Office 365 materials to PDF

1. Run the Accessibility Checker.
2. Make any suggested corrections.
3. Recheck the document if necessary until all tests are passed.
4. Navigate to the File menu.
5. Select Save As.
6. in the File Format field, select PDF.
7. Choose Best for electronic distribution and accessibility (use Microsoft online service).
8. Select Export.

Exporting to PDF using Microsoft Office 2019

Windows

If you are running Microsoft Office 2019 on Windows, you can follow these instructions:

1. Select Save As Adobe PDF,
2. Open the Options menu,
3. Ensure that Convert document information and Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF are selected.
4. Select Save.
5. If necessary, select More options…
   1. Add a title here if one doesn’t yet exist.
   2. Select Options to ensure Document structure tags for accessibility and PDF/A compliant are selected.

Mac

1. Select the File menu.
2. Choose the Save As option. (an alternative to selecting the menus is the keyboard shortcut: Shift + Command + S.)
3. Choose a location on your computer to save the PDF version.
4. Change the File Format field to PDF.
5. Select “Best for electronic distribution and accessibility”.
6. Click “Export”.

Google Workspace Documents

Important note: Our experience indicates that the Microsoft Office suite does a more thorough job when converting materials to PDFs than Google Workspace. This is particularly true if you change any of the default settings. We recommend exporting your Google Workspace documents to the Microsoft Office equivalent first, using the Accessibility Checker, and then exporting to PDF.

Grackle add-on

Use the Grackle add-on as the accessibility checker for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Each document type has its own extension e.g. Grackle Docs, Grackle Sheets, or Grackle Slides—Grackle will help you with the following:

• Checking Accessibility;
• Setting the language;
• And adding metadata like title.

Installing Grackle

To add the Grackle plugin you must have a Google suite document open. Follow the directions below or visit Grackle - Making Google Documents Accessible on the ITS blog.

1. Select the Extensions menu.
2. Navigate to Add-ons.
3. Select Get Add-ons.
4. Search for Grackle.
5. Select and install Grackle for the app you’re currently using (Docs, Sheets, Slides).

Running Grackle

1. Go to Extensions on the top menu.
2. Choose Grackle Docs (or Grackle Sheets, or Grackle Slides).
3. Choose Launch. It may take several seconds to run.
4. Make any required changes.
5. Recheck with Grackle until all tests are passed.

Important Note: if you have tables and/or images in your document, Grackle may show you a screen with what appears to be a single button with Locate and Tag. These are actually two separate buttons, Locate and Tag.

• Selecting Locate will take you to the place in the document where the error is.
• Selecting Tag will activate a pop-up for you to fill in with the proper information.

Important Note: If your document contains several tables, we highly recommend using Microsoft products as these make it easier to create accessible tables.

Exporting Google materials to PDF

Important note: If your document is complex, we recommend using Microsoft Word rather than GSuite. Word has better tools to increase accessibility in complex documents.

1. Run Grackle.
2. Make any suggested corrections.
3. Recheck the document if necessary until all tests are passed.
4. In the Grackle panel, select Export to PDF. You may have to grant permissions to Grackle on your first export or if you’ve recently cleared your cache.
5. A modal window will open. Choose Start.
   

A 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.

Pages (Apple)

Pages does not have an accessibility checker, but you can follow the other general guidelines for accessibility which include the following:

• Use Built-in Styles. See: In-program Styles in "Fast Five" Essentials to Preparing Materials.
• Set the language. See: Setting a language in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials

Use Styles and Headings 

Apply heading styles by selecting Format and choosing appropriate headings.

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

See also:Intro to paragraph styles in Pages | Mac help.

Setting language

1. Choose File from the menu at the top of your screen.
2. Select Advanced.
3. Choose the Language & Region
4. In the dialog box that appears, first choose Language
   • Important Note: According to Apple support page on Change a document’s language and formatting, changing the language of a document may reset the language and region of your computer. However, we have not experienced this. If you do discover this has happened, go to:
     • System Settings,
     • Search for Language & Region,
     • Change to your preferred language,
     • and ensure it is set as the Primary.
5. Next, choose Region.
6. Choose Okay.

Exporting Pages documents to PDF

Pages documents can be exported to PDF, but additional accessibility checks and modifications are often required in Adobe Acrobat to ensure compliance. Fixing documents in Acrobat can be very time consuming. We strongly recommend pulling your document into Microsoft Word rather than Acrobat.

LibreOffice

Exporting LibreOffice materials to PDF

• Choose Export As > PDF.
• Select Tagged PDF or Universal Accessibility (PDF/UA) for better accessibility.

Additional Resources

Deepen your understanding of users

• Stories of Web User
• Accessibility Awareness Training [Swat Moodle]. If you are unable to access the course, please reach out to accessibility(at)swarthmore.edu and request that we enroll you.

Software

• Microsoft Office 365
• Microsoft Ribbon
• Grackle - Making Google Documents Accessible
• Grackle Docs,
• Grackle Sheets,
• Grackle Slides
• Adobe Acrobat

General Information

• Principles of Accessible Design
• Best Practices: Webpage Creation
• Guidance for creating content on Swarthmore’s main websites
• LinkedIn Learning.
• Creating Accessible PDFs by Chad Chelius. Excellent LinkedIn Learning course and highly recommended.
• Setting a language in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials.
• In-program Accessibility Checkers in “Fast Five” Essentials to Preparing Materials

Microsoft Office Documents

• Microsoft's Create Accessible PDFs
• WebAIM's Converting Documents to PDFs
• Make your Excel documents accessible to people with disabilities
• Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities
• Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities

Universal Design

• The seven principles of universal design | AbilityNet
• Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone [Swat library]
• Small Teaching Online [Swat library]
• Universal Design in Higher Education