Operation Manual

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Accessibility, tags, and reflow
Last updated 4/7/2015
Features for accessible reading of PDFs
• Preferences and commands to optimize output for assistive software and devices, such as saving as accessible text
for a braille printer
• Preferences and commands to make navigation of PDFs more accessible, such as automatic scrolling and opening
PDFs to the last page read
• Accessibility Setup Assistant for easy setting of most preferences related to accessibility
• Keyboard alternates to mouse actions
• Reflow capability to display PDF text in large type and to temporarily present a multicolumn PDF in a single, easy-
to-read column.
• Read Out Loud text-to-speech conversion
• Support for screen readers and screen magnifiers
Features for creating accessible PDFs
• Creation of tagged PDFs from authoring applications
• Conversion of untagged PDFs to tagged PDFs
• Security setting that allows screen readers to access text while preventing users from copying, printing, editing, and
extracting text
• Ability to add text to scanned pages to improve accessibility
• (Acrobat Pro DC) Tools for editing reading order and document structure
• (Acrobat Pro DC) Tools for creating accessible PDF forms
Acrobat Standard DC provides some functionality for making existing PDFs accessible. Acrobat Pro DC enables you
to perform tasks, such as editing reading order, or editing document structure tags that are necessary to make some
PDF documents and forms accessible.
Additional resources
For more information about accessibility features, see these resources:
• Acrobat accessibility, overview, new features, and FAQ: www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/acrobat/
• Information and news about accessibility in Adobe products: blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/pdf/
• Creating accessible PDF documents: www.adobe.com/accessibility
• General accessibility tips: http://acrobatusers.com/forum/accessibility/
About accessible PDFs
Accessible PDFs have the following characteristics.
Searchable text
A document that consists of scanned images of text is inherently inaccessible because the content of the document is
images, not searchable text. Assistive software cannot read or extract the words, users cannot select or edit the text, and
you cannot manipulate the PDF for accessibility. Convert the scanned images of text to searchable text using optical
character recognition (OCR) before you can use other accessibility features with the document.
Alternate text descriptions (Acrobat Pro DC)