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Are Portable Document Format (PDF) Files Accessible?

April 26, 2017accessible DOCUMENT files format PDF portable

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Are Portable Document Format (PDF) Files Accessible?

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PDF files are sometimes accessible, but the access can be limited or unpredictable. Adobe Acrobat 5.0 provides accessibility features, but they must be deliberately enabled by the document author. Older versions of PDF are not natively accessible, and it is generally best to convert PDF files to HTML, which is an accessible format. There is a converter available at access.adobe.com; however, we recommend converting the original source text and images to HTML where possible, since the results of the conversion depend on how the original PDF document was authored and are not always satisfactory. Currently, we recommend that you also have HTML versions of any document that is available in PDF. The HTML version is also useful to people who want to “skim” the document before deciding whether to download and print the entire PDF version.