Contributed by Lori Markland, Director of Communications, Outreach and Program Development, MDTAP
Confession – I love PDFs and I can not lie.
I like taking a document and saving it as a PDF. I like the way it looks on the screen. And given the choice between reading a Word doc or a PDF, I’ll always choose PDF. But that doesn’t make this love affair right. Especially because I know that the vast majority of PDFs are, at best, complicated bundles of inaccessible text and overlooked tags, and at worst, they’re downright unreadable for someone using a screen reader. So, I have resolved to make sure that every document I create be converted into an accessible PDF. Easier said than done.
In my quest to learn more and do this better, I found a few links that can be super helpful in understanding why it’s good practice to make these accessible, http://www.investintech.com/resources/articles/pdfaccessibility/. And good starter tips for making an accessible PDF, http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/.
Let’s start, one accessible PDF at a time.