Making Accessible PDF documents in
Virtual Environments: PDF guidelines
for UK lectures in Higher Education
Digital Accessibility in Higher and Further Education Conference – 7th
April 2016
Dr Faezeh Seyedarabi & Rocio Calvo
Moodle an example of Virtual Learning
Environment
• The design and development of
teaching slides is a requirement
for lectures in Higher Education
(HE)
• Teaching slides are often shared
with students in PDF formats
instead of Word or Excel
documents
Use of PDF documents in Virtual Learning
Environments
• PDF are used in Virtual
environments and should be made
accessible to all users.
• According to the Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) working group of
the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C), there are different
disabilities and barriers that could
affect students’ individual learning,
when using web or digital
documents
• It is essential for teachers to
develop digital documents that are
accessible to all students
regardless of their learning
abilities, e.g. Moodle.
Making Accessible PDF documents in Virtual Environments
1. How to create an accessible content?
2. How to tag content?
3. How to create accessible PDF documents?
4
Example slide
Example slide – Some accessible information
is considered
E.g. Making Accessible PDF documents
in Virtual Environments: PDF guidelines
for UK lectures in Higher Education
Digital Accessibility in Higher and Further Education Conference – 7th
April 2016
Dr Faezeh Seyedarabi & Rocio Calvo
What do I have to do?
Make your original documents
accessible
How do I make them accessible?:
Pay attention to your content information
(I)
• Write for your target audience
• Don’t make long paragraphs
• Use headings to divide information
• Use bullet points to break up text
• Use active voice
• Avoid multiple negatives
How do I make them accessible?:
Pay attention to your content information
(II)
• Include graphics when possible:
• Avoid graphic of text
• Do not use colours to represent information
• Provide alternative text for this images
• Understandable when using black and white
How do I make them accessible?:
Pay attention to your content information
(III)
How do I make them accessible?: Tag the
content
• Tag headings
• Tag lists (Numbered and bullet points)
• Do not use spaces to modify the layout
• Identify document language
Convert to PDF
Your documents
• Include structure tags for accessibility
• Document properties
• Bookmarks using headings
• …
Next Steps
• AbilityNet Producing accessible materials for print and online
• Creating accessible Word documents
• WebAIM. Microsoft Word documents
• W3C PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0
• Gov UK. Creating accessible PDFs
• WebAIM. PDF Accessibility