PDF and Word documents published on school and district websites are often not formatted to meet digital accessibility guidelines, posing barriers for visitors who use screen readers and assistive technology.
đĄ Looking for an automated school-wide solution? Edlio Accessible Documents automatically converts every website PDF into an accessible HTML web page with screen reader support, translation, and in-document AI summaries. Learn more in our Edlio Accessible Documents: Overview & Setup Guide.
â ď¸ Note on embedded PDFs: Accessible Documents automatically applies the accessible overlay to all PDFs on your site, but embedded PDFs directly on your pages remain inaccessible. Visitors to your website can simply click the file name hyperlink to access the accessible HTML overlay.
đ PDF Remediation coming soon: The current Edlio Accessibility Report and AI tools detect PDFs across your site, but do not remediate the original source PDF files yet. A dedicated PDF Remediation tool is coming soon! If you have early interest, contact Client Success ([email protected]) or join an Accessibility Study Hall (help.edlio.com/studyhall/).
Test for PDF accessibility
Your PDF documents should be tested regularly to determine whether they meet accessibility standards. You can test individual files using online validation tools like PAVE.
Common accessibility errors found in PDFs
Typical accessibility errors that can make PDFs inaccessible to assistive devices include:
the document does not contain structural tags or headings
the document has untagged content
the document is not tagged in the correct reading order
images, charts, or graphical elements lack alternative text
the default document language is not defined
the document lacks a descriptive title in its metadata
How to fix inaccessible PDFs
The best way to resolve an accessibility error in a PDF is to fix it in the original authoring program (such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or Canva) before saving or exporting it as a PDF. Refer to our guide on PDF Accessibility for detailed recommendations on structuring your documents.
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