Writing Accessible PDFs Using Word

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Authors Hoss, H., Andersen, K., Bridge, C.
Published 1st July 2020
Audience Authors, Government/NGOs/Peaks, Industry, Librarians/Researchers/Students
ISBN 978-0-7334-3947-6
DOI 10.26288/5f9a212740356

This guide to writing accessible PDFs in Microsoft Word is provided to give users the tools to make their documents accessible to a wider audience. It is intended for anyone who creates PDF documents for public use, using Microsoft Word as the document creator and who is familiar with that software. While the focus is on Microsoft Word the principles outlined in the guide may be applied to other document creation software at the users discretion.

The use of PDF remediation software to finalise the document and make it fully compliant with the relevant standards is recommended.

Table of Contents

1.               Introduction  5

1.1.         Disclaimer 6

1.2.         Software Requirements  7

2.               Accessible Word Document Guidelines  7

3.               Generating Accessible PDFs from Word Documents  31

3.1.         Word to PDF  31

3.2.         Inspect PDF Accessibility Issues  32

3.3.         Repair PDF Accessibility Issues  34

3.3.1.         Initialise PDF Editing  37

3.3.2.         Metadata and Settings  37

3.3.3.         Role Mapping  41

3.3.4.         Logical Structure  45

3.3.5.         Finalising  52

Appendix  54

Appendix A  54

Appendix B  54

Appendix C  55

Appendix D  56