Adding Tags to PDF documents improves accessible.
Here is my first weekly accessibility tip for 2004: Adding Tags to PDF documents helps to make them more accessible.
A screen reader is not a particularly useful tool if it cannot not read out the text of a document in the correct order, or if it cannot distinguish between structural elements such as headings, links or paragraph text. With this in mind Adobe has, adopted a strategy of 'marking up' the structure of PDF documents using tags; much in the same way tags are used to markup HTML pages.
Marking up the PDF document enables compatible screen readers to read the text in the appropriate order (i.e. the order of the tags is the reading order of the document), and to make use of the information provided about document structure in a way that helps increase accessibility for users.
For example, in a tagged PDF document, when the text is presented in columns the screen reader understands that it should read down the first column, before moving across to read down the next column. In an untagged PDF document, would be read from left to right across the page - which makes no sense at all when dealing with columns of text.
So how do you add tags to your PDF documents? There are a few ways you can add tags to a PDF document, but probably the best way is to ensure that they are created automatically when converting your source document. In Word 2000 and above, do the following:
If you are using Acrobat 6 Locate the 'Adobe PDF' menu and choose 'Change Conversion Settings'. In the application Settings tab, select the option to 'Enable accessibility and reflow with Tagged PDF' - and click OK.
If you are using Acrobat 5 Locate the 'Acrobat' menu and choose 'Change Conversion Settings'. In the 'Office' tab select the option 'Embed Tags in PDF (Accessibility, Reflow)', and click OK.
When you click the convert to PDF button, the resulting document will be a tagged document.
(The above instructions assume you have installed Office 2000 or above first, and then have you installed Acrobat 5 or 6.)
There is a lot more to creating accessible PDF documents than just ensuring that you add tags to them - a good place to start your learning is the Adobe accessibility website.
Links
You can find more tips in the tips archive.
My last tip highlighted a useful accessibility toolbar, which unfortunately did not work on Macs. Both Adam Larsson and Pierre Lemieux got in touch to tell me about the PNH Toobar for Mozilla that is Mac compatible.