Replace the large hero image in the page PDF with a compressed export of the same image, keep the original as an attac…
Open your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Select Accessibility from the right-hand pane or find it under Tools.
Click Full Check (or Accessibility Check) to scan the document for accessibility issues.
Review the report and address any issues flagged, such as missing tags or reading order problems.
If the document is not tagged, select Autotag Document from the Accessibility tools.
Best practiceAfter autotagging, manually review the tags to ensure headings, lists, and tables are correctly identified, as autotagging can misinterpret complex layouts.
Open the Reading Order tool from the Accessibility pane to visually check and adjust the logical reading sequence.
RecommendationEnsure that the reading order matches the intended flow of the document for screen readers.
Use the Tags panel to inspect and edit tag structure, ensuring all content (text, images, tables) is appropriately tagged.
NoteImages must have alternative text (Alt Text) for accessibility compliance.
Save the PDF after making all necessary accessibility optimizations.
Use the Reading Order tool to drag and number content areas, ensuring screen readers follow the correct sequence.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
To make a PDF accessible for screen readers, you should add tags to the document, provide alt text for images, and check the reading order. Adobe Acrobat has tools to help you do this, so people using assistive technology can understand your document.
PDF accessibility is important because it allows everyone, including people with disabilities, to read and use documents. This helps make learning and sharing information fair for all students and teachers.
Common problems include missing text tags, images without descriptions, poor reading order, and scanned pages that are just pictures instead of real text. Fixing these problems helps everyone access the content.
You can do a basic check by trying to select text or using the 'Read Aloud' feature in some PDF viewers, but for a full check, tools like Adobe Acrobat's accessibility checker are much better.
Both aim to help people with disabilities use the content, but PDFs need special tags and descriptions inside the file, while websites use code like HTML and ARIA. The idea is similar, but the steps are different.