Creating Accessible PDF’s
Adobe, Acrobat, and PDF
It is important to distinguish between Adobe, Acrobat and PDF. These terms are
often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.
• Adobe is a company; they are the creators of Acrobat.
• Acrobat is a tool for creating, editing and viewing PDF files.
• PDF is a format or type of document. It stands for Portable Document
Format. The PDF format was created by Adobe.
The terms Adobe, Acrobat, and PDF are related in the same way as Microsoft,
Word, and doc.
PDF Tags
When people talk about "accessible" PDF files, they usually are referring to
"tagged" PDF files, even though there is more to an accessible PDF than tags.
PDF tags provide a hidden structured, textual representation of the PDF content
that is presented to screen readers. They exist for accessibility purposes only
and have no visible effect on the PDF file.
HTML tags and PDF tags often use similar tag names (e.g., both have tags
named h1) and organization structures, but they really are quite different. If you
are comfortable with HTML, you will probably have an easier time creating and
editing tagged PDF files.
PDF files are not typically created in Acrobat. They are usually created in another
program and converted to PDF. There are dozens or probably hundreds of
programs that can create PDF files, but very few of them produce tagged PDF
files. If you are using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, OpenOffice.org Writer, or
Adobe tools such as InDesign, you can often create accessible, tagged PDF files
without opening Acrobat. Of course, the accessibility of the PDF depends on the
accessibility of the original document. Utilizing this means to create an
accessible document is easier then actually opening Acrobat.
Microsoft Word
Note: The following instructions can also be used to convert PowerPoint files to
PDF.
The majority of the PDF files on the web were probably created in Microsoft
Word. The good news is that it is possible to create accessible PDF files in