Word, Google Docs, and Acrobat can produce documents that are tagged for accessibility, but none can automatically do so with accuracy. When creating documents, headings should be tagged, table and list tools should be used to create tables and lists, and alternative text for images should be thoughtfully composed for the specific needs of the document.
The easiest way to produce an accessible PDF is to prepare an accessible Word document, and then save it as a PDF. Google Docs does not produce PDFs that contain the necessary tagging and metadata from the source document. However Google Docs does produce Word .docx files with tagged content, which you can turn into tagged PDFs in Word.
In Word, apply heading styles from the Styles gallery in the Home tab. In Google Docs, use the Styles drop-down menu. Use Heading 1 for the page title. Use Heading 2 for youir major sub-headings. Use Heading 3 if you need to divide a section. Both applications offer a Title style, but this is meant for covers or title pages of longer documents.
Remember that applying a heading style performs the function of tagging the heading, so that screen reader programs can announce the headings. Do not apply a heading style merely to give a line of text a particular visual appearance.
Having extra spaces in a Word document can cause Word's accessibility checker to report it as a problem.
If you want your paragraphs to be separated by blank space, use the "Normal" paragraph style, which usually formats paragraphs to have space above and below, rather than press the Enter key to generate a blank line. A screen reader may read out the blank line as an empty paragraph.
You should avoid putting extra blank lines within a list, because it will cause Word to consider it the end of one list and the beginning of another, and thus tag it as such. This will cause screen readers to inaccurately describe the number of items on the list.
Any image that conveys important information needs to have a description, called the alternative text, that screen reader programs can read out. Images that are purely decorative (or are redundant because the information they convey is also given elsewhere in the document) should be marked as such, so the screen reader can ignore the image.
Different versions of Word have different ways of adding alternative text to an image. If you right-click the image, you may see an Edit Alt Text option. If not, try looking under Format Picture. If it gives you an option to enter both a title and a description, it is recommended that you only use the description field. Newer versions of Word provide a “mark as decorative” checkbox for images that can be ignored. In Acrobat, this is called marking an image as an artifact.
In Google Docs, left-click the image, then right-click the image for the Alt Text option. Enter your alternative text in the description field, and leave the title field empty. As of Nov. 2023, Google Docs does not appear to allow you to mark images as decorative; however the Grackle Docs add-on tool provides a "mark as artifact" option (see the Grackle Add-Ons box to the right).
Adobe Acrobat Standard has some ability to fix accessibility issues, but you need Acrobat Pro to do most tasks. UH now makes Adobe Acrobat Pro DC available to all faculty and staff.
In Acrobat Pro, in All Tools, choose Prepare for Accessibility. Then run Accessibility Check.
In older versions of Acrobat Pro, from Tools, choose Accessibility. Then run Full Check.
When you perform an Acrobat accessibility check on a Word-derived PDF, you will have to fix the document title.
In Acrobat, you can mark decorative or superfluous images as artifacts, so screen readers can ignore them.
If you are producing multiple Word documents with a similar style, you can create a Word template file that loads style definitions into your document.
To create a Word template, create a word document and define your styles. In each style that you want to carry over, right-click it and choose Modify. Choose New Documents Based on This Template and click OK. Save the file as a Word Template (a .dotx file).
Click on File, then New, then choose Personal, then open your template. You can have both default content as well as pre-defined styles to work with.
This is a good way to update an older document with a new style, without have to copy and paste content from the old document into the new one.
Your customized styles should now be in the Styles menu. You can apply the styles to your document by clicking on the different parts of the document and choosing the appropriate style. Be aware that when you are working with an existing document, it may have been incorrectly automatically tagged in the past; it's not unusual for a part of the document to have been incorrectly tagged as a heading, or tagged with the wrong level of heading.
See this article for more about working with Word templates.
Both MS Word and Adobe Acrobat Pro have accessibility checkers that will notify you of problems and offer instructions and suggestions for addressing them.
From the File tab, choose Info. Then click on Check for Issues, and in the menu that open, choose Check Accessibility.
In Acrobat Pro, from All Tools, choose Prepare for Accessibility. Then run Accessibility Check.
Grackle Docs, Sheets, and Slides can be used with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to find accessibility issues. Users of the paid Grackle service can fix problems (including some not directly addressable in the Google app) and produce accessible PDFs. People with University of Hawaiʻi Google accounts have access to the paid service, and can follow these installation instructions.
