Documents

Are your Portable Document Format (PDF) files and Word documents marked up correctly?

Why it’s important

Nikau is visually impaired and unable to fill in an important form by using a screen reader. As there is no alternative version, Nikau has to ask a friend for assistance.
Tim is blind and only owns a mobile phone. Tim needs to access important information to be able to apply for support services. As there is no alternative version, Tim has to visit the library to use their desktop computers.
Bronwyn is a trades-person. She can't find key information as it's only available via PDF format and is not appearing in a site search.

Publish content on a web page (HTML) rather than in a Portable Document Format (PDF) or Word document for business information. If there is a strong user need for a document, such as printing, the document must be made as accessible as possible.
Save Word documents as .docx format to preserve accessibility features. Other formats produced by Microsoft Word (RTF, DOC, TXT, and ODF) may not be accessible.
Avoid watermarks and/or background images in Word documents. These may be hidden or confusing to people with visual or cognitive disabilities.
Avoid using tables for layout in Microsoft Word. Only use tables for tabular data.
Develop reusable accessible design templates to reduce the level of effort to create accessible electronic content.
Watch the PDF accessibility training video series (YouTube)(this link opens an external website)
Check PDF documents contains real text (scanned documents often render text as unreadable). If not, recreate the PDF file using the source document or convert it to include true text.
Check PDF's for tags. Tags enable assistive technologies to read and interact with the document. Headings (h1), paragraphs (p) and figures are examples of tag types. Check the tags pane (View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Tags) to ensure there are tags, and if not, add them.

Last modified: 27 October 2021