Skip to Main Content

Accessibility in Adobe PDFs

This guide shares practices for creating accessible PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Verify reading order

Logical reading order must be verified manually in PDFs. Verify the reading order displayed in the Tags panel to make sure it matches the logical reading order of the document and make adjustments as necessary.

To check reading order:

  1. Select All tools > Prepare for Accessibility > Reading Order
  2. In the Reading Order dialog box, select Show Page Content Groups, and then select Page Content Order.
  3. Check the reading order of highlighted sections (if highlighted sections do not appear, the document does not have tags and this must be fixed first).
  4. Reorder items as needed in the Order panel using drag and drop.

Visit Reading Order tool overview for more information.

Check color contrast

Many PDFs require a manual check of color contrast to ensure they are accessible to people who are color blind or have low vision.

Text color should be easily viewable and should not be the only indicator of meaning or function. Color balance should have at least a 4.5:1 ratio for small text and 3:1 ratio for large text.

Color contrast is important because text and background colors can determine how people interact with the content that is written in those colors. Low-contrast colors are difficult to read when text contrasts poorly with background colors, while high-contrast colors are easier to read when paired together.

When in doubt, these color combinations provide high contrast:

  • White/black
  • Yellow/black
  • Orange/black
  • White/navy
  • White/purple

Use the Colour Contrast Analyser, a free app that analyzes colors and contrast, and displays results almost immediately, to check color contrast.

Alternatively, you can apply high-contrast colors to the PDF.

  1. Select the hamburger menu (Windows) or the Acrobat menu (macOS) > Preferences.
  2. In the dialog that opens, from the left panel, select Accessibility.
  3. Select Replace Document Colors and then select Use High-Contrast Colors. From the High-contrast color combination, choose the color combination that you want and then select OK.

Avoid image-only files

If a PDF is a scanned file, it is likely completely inaccessible to some users. Scanned files are often images, so if text is included, a screen reader has no way to discern the text. Instead of a scanned or image-only file, an accessible version must be provided. 

  1. If the file is a course text, request it as a course reserve. This also helps ensure copyright law is followed. 
  2. If the file is a course material:  
  3. Use OCR to recognize text in scanned images. (All tools > Scan & OCR > Recognize Text > In this file > Select options > Recognize Text).
  4. Request an alternate format in UDOIT (available to faculty only)