How to Make Accessible Documents (Part 2)

This hands-on workshop is a follow-up to the “How to make Accessible Word Documents” workshop (held the day before this workshop), it has been designed with the approach of addressing more complicated content.

The task of creating an accessible document goes farther than just correctly formatting the text in your original file. With different content styles inside a document, such as complicated tables, lists and diagrams – it can leave you frustrated and unsure of what to do such as:

• How do I make tables with merged cells more accessible?
• What do I do with complicated drawings and charts?
• When should I use the auto tag feature in Acrobat?
• How do I fix incorrect reading order?
• We use a lot of abbreviations – how do I make them accessible?

This is a hands-on, in-depth course with a great deal of attention paid to the complexity of creating accessible PDFs from inaccessible documents within Acrobat Professional.

Great training – lots of new information! Well structured session.

So much to learn and use immediately. The workshop exceeded my expectations!

Who should attend this workshop

• Anyone who attended the “How to Make Accessible Word Documents” workshop provided by Accessibility Services Canada.
• If you are currently creating accessible content and need a refresher or an upgrade, including Communication or Accessibility Coordinators, Website Content Managers, Marketing staff and Administrative Assistants.

What you will walk away with…

1. How to format an inaccessible PDF.
2. Where relevant tools and menu items are in Acrobat.
3. Available automated accessibility features.
4. Understanding of some of the limitations of making accessible content.
5. A better understanding of creating and mending accessible content using Acrobat Professional.

Sample of course contents

Diving into Acrobat Professional and working with a select group of panels and features to create accessible PDFs, this course covers the following topics:

• Tables – understanding merged cells, split cells and multiple headers.
• Working with the table editor and adding table summaries.
• Lists – building proper list and sub-list categories with bullets.
• Acronyms – properly tagging all of them.
• Maps and diagram description tricks and work arounds.
• Making a “Table of Contents” accessible.
• Removing tags from specified non-meaningful content.
• Adding bookmarks in a PDF document.
• Adding and adjusting document properties.
• Using the role map feature.
• Working with floating text boxes in Microsoft Word PDFs.
• Manually re-tagging content in a PDF.
• Making scanned PDF content accessible.
• Setting the document default page views.
• Using Accessibility Checkers and examining the results.
• Exploring different online resources for accessibility.
• Using the “Make Accessible” Wizard

Workshop Requirements

• Laptop (Mac or PC) and a Computer Mouse (required for short cuts). 
• Basic Knowledge of Acrobat Professional version 11 or DC (Primary focus will be on using Acrobat Professional DC).

Technical Notes

• Do all installations a day or two before attending the workshop.
• Install any new updates.
• Unlock any USB connectors so you can access class files via USB stick.
• Please note that Acrobat Reader version is not used in this workshop, only Acrobat Professional.