Reflection on Creating

Accessible PDFs

By: Kevin L. Fowler

IT595
Dr. Smaldino
Word Count: 1,234

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Introduction
Portable Document Formatting (PDF) is one of the most
universally used file formats in the world. Developed over twenty
years ago by Adobe Systems, PDFs were originally created with the
vision of a paperless office and a method to easily transfer files to
any computer using any operating system (The history of PDF,
2013).
Although the PDF file formatting has become open source and is
now utilized in virtually every application on the market, Adobe is still
the leader in developing and supporting the file format, as well as
creating software solutions to read and utilize the formats features.
One of the software solutions is the free Adobe Reader and its premium
featured cohort Adobe Acrobat.
PDF by its existence has a strong history of general accessibility.
One of the more popular functions of this file formats is the ability to
transfer media from one computer to another without the need of the
native (oftentimes expensive) software on the receiving machine. For
many lower income students, the discounted Black Friday computer
they purchased did not come preinstalled with Microsoft Word.
Unfortunately, the student does not have the funds to purchase the
$120 student version of Microsoft Office, so his or her instructor simply
converts the Microsoft Word document to a PDF, the student then

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downloads Adobe Reader to their machine and the student can now
access the document.
PDF has also been the favorite for individuals with disabilities,
particularly for those with sight disabilities. Virtually every individual
that is blind or has limited vision and who utilizes assistive technology
is fully aware that if it is a PDF and the text within that document has
OCR-enabled (optical character recognition) text, the onboard screen
readers found in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat can make the text
on the screen fully accessible. However, as this study will soon
demonstrate, not all PDFs are created equal.

Description of the Media

When I taught 8th grade history and even 12th grade U.S.
government, I had my students memorize the names of all the U.S.
presidents using this song as a mnemonic device. I also gave them a
handout to give them a visual list of the Presidents; not too unlike the
media I chose for this project.
This media was found through the Open Educational Resources
Commons and is a PDF document from a WhiteHouse.gov web page
(Presidents of the United States, 2013). The very fact that it is a web
page means that there is a lot of text and media surrounding the
content that is irrelevant to our educational purposes. For instance,
there are many now inaccessible links, links to social media and

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(oftentimes controversial) issue pages, website banners, and etc.
Having a screen reader parse over all of this irrelevant-to-the-content
information would be a disservice to the student. Yet in any other
context, a teacher would not think twice about using this content.
Using Adobe Reader XIs screen reading options confirmed my
hypothesis. Not only were all of the irrelevant links read, but the screen
reader completely ignored the picture
of George Washington on the page
and even worse read the sequence of
Presidents out of order because they
were arranged in columns. Here,
where this handout would be used to
teach students the order of U.S.
Presidents, my visually impaired
students would be hearing, Number
3, Thomas Jefferson. Number 15,
James Buchannan. Number 4, James
Madison. Number 16, Abraham

Figure 1 Selected Handout

Lincoln and thus the handout in itself would be completely in vain.

But this is where Adobe Acrobat XI comes in. Utilizing its ordering
features (View->Show/Hide->Navigation Panes->Order) , I can tag this PDF
document so it is read in proper, sequential order for my students.

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Doing this, however, takes a little training, time, and patience, even for
Adobe Certified Experts in Acrobat XI like myself.
First, you need to ensure that OCR compatible text is available in
the document. The easiest way to check for
this is whether or not you can select the text
using a mouse. If not, this document was
more than likely scanned and at its current
state is ineligible to be screen read. This can
be rectified by converting the text to OCR by
going to Tools->Text Recognition.
Next, It is important first to hear how
the document is read off to see where the
mistakes are currently. So activate the screen
Figure 2Tagging Options in
Acrobat XI

reader (View>Read Out Loud->Activate Read Out

Loud->Read to End of Document)

and listen to the

document. Then, once the errors are detected, go to the

aforementioned Order button on the navigation pane. Starting with the
first page, drag a box over the first thing that you want to have read,
and then label it either a text, an image, a header, a table, or other
relevant option available.
In my handout, I first tagged the heading The Presidents,
added an alt tag to the picture of George Washington, the heading
Learn More About Each President, the centuries the Presidents

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served their term, and finally I tagged the names of the Presidents by
columns. Once completed, I activated the screen reader, closed my
eyes to simulate what it would be like for a visually impaired student,
and the document read in the desired, logical order. I was very
pleased.

Reflection and Ethical Considerations

After doing this activity I was convinced of the importance and
even empowered towards the notion of accommodating visually
impaired students. Yet, as a former classroom teacher, I realize how
time consuming this would become if every bit of my written media
had to be delivered in this fashion. The minutes would start to add up
and I would fear that my other 99% of students would be neglected
while I was tagging hundreds of pages throughout the school year. I
would have to constantly remind myself that not only are providing
these accommodations lawful, but they are ethical in that they create a
level learning playing field for all of my students which empower[s]
them to become stronger, more self-reliant people (Coombs, 2012).
Another ethical consideration is that one has to pay for these
tagging features in Adobes for-profit Adobe Acrobat. While Adobe
offers the screen reading options to visually impaired individuals at no
cost, the very fact that this is a software that all educators need and

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Adobea $10 billion dollar companyfrowns upon virtual licenses and
only offer a miniscule educational discount places the company in a bit
of an ethical situation. Acrobat XI Pro Student and Teacher Edition is
$119imagine a large school district buying this for all of their faculty
even when this is $80 off the consumer edition.
A personal reflection at the end of this project shows a bit of
pride that I am able to utilize this technology effectively for an
otherwise disenfranchised population, yet of frustration regarding the
usability of the software. I do not blame Adobe Systems for this, as no
software can automatically know the manner in which text needs to be
read. To properly train teachers how to tag these PDFs takes time and
money in training, as wellyet another resource that already drained
school systems would have to utilize.
Withstanding, hopefully I illustrated that even with all of these
obstacles to properly tag a document for visually impaired students,
you have also been convinced that the rewards far outweigh the
needed investments and that this is a worthwhile process.

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References

Coombs, N. (2010). Making online teaching accessible: inclusive course design for
students with disabilities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Presidents of the United States | OER Commons. (n.d.). The White House. Retrieved June
28, 2013, from http://www.oercommons.org/courses/presidents-of-the-unitedstates-1

The history of PDF | How the file format and Acrobat evolved. (2013, January 27).
Prepressure.com | Prepress, design, fonts, PDF, PostScript and print. Retrieved
June 28, 2013, from http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/history