Providing structure for your PDF document is important to achieve accessibility. When considering structure, think of how an outline determines the way content is formatted and prioritized; a heading labeled 'I' precedes a heading labeled 'II', content of letter 'A' comes before 'B', bolding content tells that it is important. In a PDF document, this structure is embedded and determines how the information will display; this becomes even more vital for documents that contain multiple columns.
Individuals who are blind or have visual impairments often use a screen reader to interpret a document; the structure determines how the screen reader will read the information. Without structure, the screen reader has difficulty interpreting the document. If there are multiple columns, a screen reader may read the document from top to bottom, left to right, essentially interpreting the two columns as one.
As an example, consider if the Declaration of Independence was written in two columns (see Image 14).
,
123 KB)
,
1 KB).Acrobat 6.0 allows you to denote text as a paragraph
of information, no matter what the layout.
However, PDF files created using older versions of Acrobat, such as Acrobat
4.0, contained a kind of structure that is not accessible, and will need
to be converted. It is recommended that you structure your document in
Microsoft Word and then save it as a PDF. You can also provide structure
for your document by using the free Make
Accessible Plug-in
from Adobe which can auto-analyze your document, searching for column,
header, and paragraph information.
The next page offers a lab that focuses on the steps necessary to structure and save your PDF documents.
College of Architecture (COA)
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User Agreement
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Structure & Read Order
Image 14
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