MarkWahlstenDI

To add to @JohannaH's great list of resources, for anyone new to PDF accessibility and would like to know more: AccessAbility 2: A Practical Handbook on Accessible Graphic Design | RGD A good and brief overview of how typography, colour and language affect accessibility (digitally, and in print) It has some short guides for making accessible PDFs from InDesign or Word (+Acrobat) It also has a really useful section on how to convey the benefits of prioritising accessibility to bosses, stakeholders and co-workers As a side-note, the PDF document itself (now) also functions as a good example of tag structure and use of alt text WebAIM: Alternative Text For me, alternative text (or alt-text) is frequently the part that stumps me the most WebAIM's guide gives a good outline of the "What", "When", "Where" and "How" of writing alt-text, with examples Accessible-PDF.info A good resource for troubleshooting! Last of all, my biggest (subjective) tip – sometimes the most accessible PDF may be no PDF at all... by which I mean: Explore what the best format(s) for the digital output of your project is going to be, before defaulting to PDF: A well-structured HTML document is the gold standard for accessibility, and offers the most flexibility for users to tailor the content to their specific needs A "reflowable" EPUB3 is basically a portable HTML document For your content, there may be fewer steps involved in making a well-structured and accessible HTML or EPUB3 document Tools for creating accessible HTML and EPUB3 documents are far more widely available (and free) As a user-friendly way for writers to generate structured HTML documents from plain text, consider incorporating Markdown – as used by the online tool AROW, for example Not everyone can afford a subscription to Creative Cloud (or even Acrobat Pro on its own)! Only share information as a PDF if you absolutely have to ...and provide the important information in an alternative format, such as – you guessed it – HTML and/or EPUB3 Not to say PDFs aren't useful (they're not going anywhere) – but asking this question at the beginning could save you a lot of unnecessary headaches later. Also – as @JohannaH highlighted, and many weary PDF remediators will tell you – Acrobat Pro and InDesign / QuarkXpress / MS Word don't represent the best, simplest, or most intuitive processes for creating accessible documents. They are just the least-worst tools available, and these are just useful guides for making the most of them Keep pushing for better tools!

Adding my voice to this! I also 100% agree with @MaggieP's comment. Accessible PDFs, or accessible ePub3 creation is vital for digital content creation. It is a strict legal requirement for online documents in many countries, not to mention common-sense from a basic communication point of view. How can we call ourselves effective content creators, if we keep ignoring a whole chunk of our target audiences?