| 47 Acrobat 9 Pro PDF Accessibility Repair Workflow

• Reliable Character Encoding Is Provided . Checks for fonts that are inaccessible to

screen readers and other assistive software. Fonts must contain enough information for

Acrobat to correctly extract all the characters to text. If one or more fonts don’t allow for

the correct extraction of all the characters, the PDF is inaccessible.

• All Content Is Contained In The Document Structure . Checks for page elements that

may have been overlooked during tagging. Adding these elements to the tag tree (if

necessary) ensures that a screen reader can present the content to a user.

• All Form Fields Have Descriptions . Checks for form fields that are missing descriptions.

• Tab Order Is Consistent With The Structure Order . Checks whether tags properly

reflect the document’s structure.

• List And Table Structure Is Correct . Checks whether tags that have been generated for

lists and tables meet the requirements of tagged PDF.

Continue Checking Until All Issues are Addressed

Repeat the process of running the Accessibility Checker and using familiar repair techniques or following

the Hints for Repair until the Accessibility Checker indicates “The checker found no problems in this

document” for the tests you have selected (See “Figure 29 A Successful Accessibility Check” on page 47)

Note:

While the Accessibility Checker helps you evaluate the accessibility of your documents

and helps identify areas that may be in conflict with Adobe's interpretations of the

referenced guidelines, the Accessibility Checker does not check all accessibility guidelines

and criteria, including those in such referenced guidelines, and Adobe does not warrant

that your documents will comply with any specific guidelines or regulations. Please

consult with your legal counsel for guidance on compliance with the referenced

guidelines or any other accessibility guidelines.

Figure 29 A Successful Accessibility Check

Additional Validation Techniques

Of course, the best way to test the accessibility of a document is to attempt to use the document with the

tools that your readers will use. However, even if you don’t have a screen reader or braille printer, you can

still use any of several methods provided by Acrobat for checking the accessibility of a PDF file.

• Use Reflow view to quickly check reading order.

• Use Read Out Loud to experience the document as it will be experienced by readers who use this

text-to-speech conversion tool.

• Save the document as accessible text and then read the saved text file in a word-processing

application to experience the document as it will be experienced by readers who use a braille

printer.

• Use the TouchUp Reading Order tool, Tags tab, and Content tab to examine the structure, reading

order, and contents of a PDF in detail.

Making PDF Accessible with Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro