PDFs are detailed documents that contain voluminous information for users. Unfortunately, a significant population with a disability cannot access these documents online as they are visually impaired. The American Disability Act (ADA) has made it mandatory for PDF creators to apply accessibility features for the disabled community. The laws state that digital documents should be accessible to every audience type, especially for the visually challenged.

The WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) also states the importance of accessibility and frames its regulations in favor of disabled people. There are several techniques, screen reading being the most popular, the community uses to access online information. PDF creators should use accessible PDF services from digital agencies that convert a PDF into an accessible for all documents.

They optimize the document and prepare it for the population who cannot see and read it but has the legal right to access it online. Screen reader tools read web content that interprets every line and picture to make it comprehensive.

Section 508 of the ADA aims to simplify access to PDF documents for individuals with disabilities. Undoubtedly, it is the right thing to do as every citizen has the right to access these documents for information or any customized content that they feel is useful for their information.

Can You Increase PDF Accessibility? If Yes, How?

Increasing a PDF accessibility level means optimizing the document with accessibility rules and creating a format usable by people with cognitive impairments. Here are some strategies that can directly improve the accessibility level of a PDF and make reading easy for those with disabilities.

Improve The Selectable Text Content:

The text in your PDF should be searchable and selectable. Screen readers will interpret the lines written in the document and not the images. Your PDF should contain:

Proper meta titles and descriptions
Heading tags
Alternate text with Images
Proper interlinking
Paragraphs with defined structure

Include Interactive Forms:

Contact forms provide leads for the business. In PDFs, you must embed a form that captures the user details. For users with disabilities, these forms are accessible and interactive enough with no time-out feature because the users take a long time to fill out the form. The redirection to the session expiration page is frustrating.

Text-based Transcriptions:

It helps for people with hearing impairments. If there’s any video or audio track, these transcriptions help understand them. Alternate text on images and videos is compulsory to perceive information better. You can also use a PDF accessibility checker online free tool to check the score and implement measures to improve accessibility. Moreover, the paid version of these tools will give you a detailed analysis.

Text and Color Contrast:

WCAG has clear rules for setting color contrasts for the web content before publishing online. Also, proper distribution of title tags, heading tags, alt tags, and video captions is necessary to simplify reading documents by blind people.

Correct Content Structure:

The content should have correct anchor text, links, navigation patterns, tables, and diagrams to explain the topic. Adding a header to rows and columns and proper division of cells makes the PDF more convincing.

How To Convert a PDF to an Accessible Document?

There are two steps proactively involved in making a PDF into accessible document:

Software Applications:

These applications follow the best accessibility practices and convert plain documents into accessible PDFs like Adobe Acrobat Pro. It also fixes accessibility issues quickly.

Export to PDF Option:

The document can retain its accessibility features after PDF export after edits and saving.

What are the Benefits of Accessible PDFs?

There are several benefits of having an accessible document online:

Search engine-friendly: These documents are google-friendly. Google bots prefer to crawl and index these documents for better search engine ranking.

Addition to Website Traffic: When visibility increases, there is a proportionate increase in website traffic and more probability for new customers.

Better UX and UI: These well-formatted documents give users a better experience while accessing them. It makes things easier for website visitors to navigate through the documents.

Does AI Tools Help In Increasing PDF Accessibility?

Yes! The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made PDF files more searchable, and user-friendly. The role of AI in PDF accessibility services extends to:

Analyzing large content
Converts image files into texts
Summarizes the PDF content
Saves time

AI Uses Advanced Technology:

It uses optical character recognition technology to convert scanned documents into editable texts.

Search Functionality:

It is easy to extract, edit, copy, and search specific content in the PDF. You can access any content part in the whole document through a click.

Categorization Feature:

It categorizes and classifies PDFs by analyzing the content.Also, it helps in organizing and streamlining documents to reduce clutter.

Final Part:

Do you want your PDFs accessible to everyone by following ADA compliance? Connect to accessibility experts to perform the appropriate audit to comply with the website compliance rules and prepare your document for the visually-challenged community.

How to Create and Increase Pdf Accessibility for Disabled Users?