We’ve mentioned that PDFs are generally less accessible than Word files, and that making a PDF accessible takes more time. We listed the process for making PDFs accessible in a previous post. There are a few instances when you do have to make a Word file into a PDF. So here are the best steps for doing so:
- Make sure you have Adobe Acrobat DC on your computer (we discussed downloading this in a previous post)
- Make sure you ran the accessibility checker in Word (we discussed this in last week’s post)
- With Acrobat installed on your computer you should have an ACROBAT tab in Word, select it.
- Select “Preferences”, it should be the second option from the left between “Create PDF” and “Create and Attach to Email”, a new window will pop up
- Under settings make sure “enable accessibility and reflow with tagged PDF” is checked
- Select “advanced settings” and another window will pop up
- Under general settings make sure “optimize for fast web view” is unchecked
- Under fonts settings (still under the advanced settings window) make sure the “subset embedded fonts when percent…” is checked.
- Also set it to 1%
- Still under the fonts settings remove all entries under the “never embed” list
- Now you can use the first option in the ACROBAT tab, “Create PDF”
- Finally, you’ll still need to run the Acrobat accessibility checker, as also linked above.
Yes, Word does have a save as PDF option. However, when it comes to accessibility doing the above steps will reduce your work in making the final PDF accessible.