Accessibility and Assistive Technology

Convert an Accessible Microsoft Word Document to an Accessible Portable Document Format (PDF) 

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A Portable Document Format (PDF) can be difficult for screen readers and other assistive tools to interpret because they lack structure, semantic information, and alt text. Here is the fastest and easiest way to make sure your create a Word Document that is accessible by running the Accessibility Checker and manually checking for inaccessibility before you generate or save your document as a PDF. After you've addressed any issues found by the Accessibility Checker, Microsoft 365 will use that information to create accessibility tags in the PDF where you can then double check in for accessibility in the Adobe Creative Cloud Account's Accessibility Checker and Editing Tools.

Keep in mind, that when you need to create a PDF from a Word document, not all accessibility from the Word document will carry over to the PDF. Some extra steps need to be taken to ensure the PDF is accessible.

Steps to take to create an Accessible Word Document

Add a Document Title

When a Word document is converted to a PDF, the document title will be missing unless you create a title in the document's properties. Screen readers utilize the document title of a PDF and will throw an error if it is missing.

How to Add a Document Title in Word

  1. In Microsoft Word, go to File > Info
  2. Under the "Properties" column on the right, look for "Title".
  3. Next to "Title" enter an easy-to-read title.
  4. Save the document.
Screenshot of Word document properties with an arrow pointing to the title option
How to Add a Document Title in Adobe Acrobat (if not set in Word)
  1. If you do not have the original Word document, you can still set a document title for the PDF file in the Adobe Acrobat application.
  2. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat.
  3. In the "Search tools" textbox on the right, start typing “Accessibility”.
  4. Select "Accessibility Check".
  5. The Accessibility Checker panel opens on the left and displays the accessibility issues Acrobat found with your PDF.
  6. Click the ">" carrot next to "Document (# issues)".
  7. In the Document section, right-click "Title – Failed", then choose "Fix" from the context menu.
  8. If no title was set in the original source, a description dialog window appears. The top section shows the missing title.
  9. Uncheck the "Leave As Is" checkbox and enter an easy-to-read title.
  10. Click OK to set the title.
  11. Save the PDF to keep your changes.


Screenshot of Adobe Acrobat with arrows pointing to Accessibility Check and Title

Saving the Word Document as an Accessible PDF

Note: Do not use the "Save as Adobe PDF" or "Print to PDF" features in Microsoft Word. These options will not create an accessible PDF and should be avoided. To save an accessible PDF, use the following instructions:

  1. Go to File > Save As > Browse and choose where to save your PDF in the file browser.
  2. In the Save As window, change the "Save as type" to "PDF (*.pdf)".
  3. Toggle the "Open file after publishing" checkbox to evaluate the PDF after it is saved.
  4. Select the "Options" button, and review the "Include non-printing information" section to ensure the following checkboxes are checked:
    • Create bookmarks using: Headings: A proper heading structure is important for document accessibility. See the article How to create heading hierarchy for more information.
    • Document properties: Ensures properties like document title are saved in the new PDF.
    • Document structure tags for accessibility: Ensures the resulting PDF includes tags, making the PDF readable by a screen reader.
  5. Select OK to save the options.
  6. Select Save to convert your Word document to an accessible PDF.
  7. The newly saved PDF will open.
Screenshot of Options button with Open file after publishing checkbox
Screenshot of PDF options for Microsoft Word save

Checking Accessibility in Adobe Acrobat Pro

Note: Checking PDF accessibility can often be complicated and time-consuming. The following instructions will provide an overview of the basics of checking PDF accessibility to ensure your Word document was successfully transferred with accessibility.

Note: To use the accessibility check tool, you need a premium subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud or Adobe Acrobat Pro.

  1. In the "Tools" panel in the right sidebar, choose "Accessibility". 
    • You can also go to the "Tools" tab at the top left and choose "Accessibility".
  2. Choose "Accessibility Check".
  3. Click the "Start Checking" button.
  4. In the Accessibility Checker panel that just popped up on the left any issues are displayed in bold. You can expand items by clicking the ">" carrot drop down button.
  5. If there are no accessibility issues with an item, it will be marked with a green checkmark.
  6. Issues that need to be fixed are marked with a red circle and an X. 
    • Right click on the error and choose "Fix" if possible. 
    • For more information about the error, you can also right click and choose "Explain". This will take you to an Adobe webpage explaining the error.
  7. The blue circle with question marks indicates that you need to do a manual check of the issue in question. The Adobe program cannot check that element for accessibility automatically. For example, logical reading order and color contrast need to be checked manually.
Screenshot of Accessibility Check panel in Adobe Acrobat

Checking Logical Reading Order and Heading Hierarchy

  1. On the left sidebar in Acrobat, choose the Tags icon. 
    • If you don't see the Tags icon, select the "View" menu, hover over "Show/hide", then hover over "Navigation panes" and select "Tags".
  2. Expand the Tags tree by clicking the ">" carrot.
  3. Select the "Options" icon and ensure "Highlight Content" is selected. 
  4. Select the first tag in the list and confirm that the element highlighted is the first item in the document. From there, use your down arrow key to traverse the list of tags in order. When going from one tag to the next, ensure that the elements that are highlighted in the document follow the logical reading order of the document. If the tags are out of order, you can click and drag the tag to the proper place in the tags tree.
Screenshot of Tags panel in Adobe Acrobat

Color Contrast

The other manual check that should be performed is checking color contrast. 

If you want to use another high contrast color combination:

  1. Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat: Preferences (Mac OS).
  2. Click Accessibility.
  3. Select Replace Document Colors, and then select Use High-Contrast Colors. Choose the color combination that you want from the drop-down list, and then click OK.

For more information on accessible color contrast, please see the following articles:

How to Check Color Contrast with A11Y

How to Add and Use High Color Contrast

How to Check Color Contrast with Colour Contrast Analyser (CCA) 


Screenshot of Accessibility Preferences in Adobe Acrobat showing Document Colors Options

Additional Resources

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