Advanced Accessible PDFs

Course details

Accessible PDF files are files that can be read by a screen reader by users who are visually impaired. While you can’t just push a button to make a PDF accessible, with the tools available in Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign, you can make sure that any PDF you create is a valid accessible PDF file. Prioritizing accessibility doesn't mean you can't leverage the powerful tools the PDF format offers, though, and in this course, instructor Chad Chelius outlines techniques that can help you manage complex layouts and add advanced features like PDF forms, PDF/UA compliance, and complex tables, while keeping PDFs accessible and compliant. Chad shows you how to add and adjust PDF tags to optimize the screen-reading experience, make scanned PDFs accessible, examine and repair tables, remediate existing files to meet PDF/UA standards, and more. He also covers advanced issues that come up with Acrobat, InDesign, and Word.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Is your document accessible
02 - What you should know

1. Advanced Accessibility Topics in Adobe Acrobat

03 - Shortcuts for walking the tags tree
04 - Creating a tag from a selection
05 - Paragraphs that split across a page
06 - Creating hyperlinks
07 - Fixing untagged hyperlinks
08 - Addressing multiline hyperlinks
09 - Advanced techniques using the Content pane
10 - Security and accessibility
11 - Merging and splitting documents
12 - Tagging challenging elements
13 - Using Autotag
14 - Fixing decorative bullets and numbers
15 - Reading options in Acrobat
16 - Detriments of editing a PDF file
17 - Working with ligatures and drop caps

2. Working with Tables in Adobe Acrobat

18 - Defining header cells in a table
19 - Tables that span multiple pages
20 - Understanding table spans
21 - Tagging tables with merged cells
22 - Defining scope and span manually
23 - Dealing with blank cells
24 - What makes a bad table
25 - Creative table solutions
26 - Creating heading and data associations
27 - An alternative solution to header associations
28 - Linearizing tables

3. Working with Forms in Adobe Acrobat

29 - Adding form fields in Adobe Acrobat
30 - Adding a tooltip to form fields
31 - Manually tagging form fields
32 - Automatically tagging form fields
33 - Tagging a button
34 - Structuring form tags in the Tags panel

4. Advanced Accessibility Topics in Microsoft Word

35 - Saving accessible PDFs from Microsoft Word
36 - Working with merged cells
37 - Working with custom styles
38 - Working with multiple table header rows
39 - Working with multilevel lists
40 - Setting hyperlink tooltips

5. Advanced Accessibility Topics in Adobe InDesign

41 - Working with merged table cells
42 - Working with table headers
43 - Getting creative with bullets and numbers
44 - Adding alt text for hyperlinks
45 - Adding form fields in InDesign
46 - Adding form fields in tables
47 - Defining tab order for form fields in InDesign
48 - Working with InDesign-drawn objects
49 - Text effects and accessibility
50 - Helpful scripts for accessibility
51 - The MadeToTag plugin

6. PDF UA Remediation

52 - Understanding PDF UA
53 - Reviewing the PAC 2021 Checker
54 - The Preflight panel
55 - Artifacting nonstructural elements
56 - Fixing element used as a root element error
57 - Fixing inappropriate use of an element error
58 - Role mapping issues
59 - Fixing alternative descriptions for annotations error
60 - Adding IDs for note elements
61 - Fixing a figure element with no bounding box error
62 - Embedding fonts
63 - Fixing table header cell has no associated subcells error
64 - Adding the PDF UA entry
65 - Why is PDF UA not verified
66 - PDF UA resources

7. Third-Party Tools

67 - Tools for visualizing document structure
68 - axesWord
69 - axesPDF

Conclusion

70 - Next steps for accessibility