(Photo : Greta Hoffman)

The spread of e-commerce has made it remarkably easy to make purchases or use various services. However, for people with certain disabilities, such as visual impairment, the massive transition to e-commerce has become a kind of challenge. The information on the websites is presented mainly in printed form, but special reading devices cannot read every file format. Learn how to make a PDF accessible to visually impaired people so they can read the content on your website on their own.

Why Business Needs to Make PDF Accessible

PDF technology, which has conquered the entire world due to its unique qualities, takes into account the interests of different people. With the help of special devices, such as screen readers, text-to-speech software, and other assistive technologies, PDFs can also be read by visually impaired people. However, these technologies do not recognize a standard PDF file - it must first be made accessible.

The reasons to create PDF in such a way that it can be read using assistive technologies have humanitarian and practical aspects:

• Humanitarian lies in the fact that the accessible PDF solution transforms your business into an inclusive one, making it easy for people with disabilities to use the services you provide.

• The practical ones are not only considerations of expanding your consumer base but also requirements of US laws according to which e-businesses must make their websites accessible. And if an e-commerce company ignores this request, there is a certain risk that it could be sued.

What Is the Difference Between Accessible PDF and Standard PDF?

The main criterion for distinguishing Accessible PDF from any other is that any user can read the information contained in it, regardless of the degree of visual impairment they have. People with disabilities read files with the help of various assistive technologies. However, to do this, the document you create with the PDF generator must be compatible with screen readers and other text-to-speech methods or a Braille printout.

Standard PDF files are incredibly popular around the world and are widely used due to the ability to convert PDF to almost any other format and easily edit PDF in an online editor or using applications. However, despite their prevalence, people with disabilities will not be able to read most PDFs unless you make them accessible.

How to Create PDF File Accessible?

The main elements in the PDFs responsible for interacting with assistive technologies are the tag trees. They ensure the correct movement of technologies for reading so that they distinguish not only the content of the text but also non-textual elements, such as diagrams, pictures, graphs, and so on.

Therefore, you need to tag all textual and non-textual elements correctly using a special PDF tool. You can also combine PDF, as is the case with standard file versions. However, after this operation, make sure that the tags are placed in all combinable parts. If you offer visitors PDFs based on scanned text pages, you need to use an optical character recognition (OCR) tool. Only then will you be able to tag everything correctly.

Additional Methods to Make Your File Accessible

You also need to consider other points that will make your PDF accessible:

• Use Alt-texts on any non-text elements. This is a special textual description that can be read by assistive technologies to convey the meaning of the item.

• Use color schemes in your PDF products that can be more easily decoded by people with color vision impairments.

• The same applies to contrast, font size, and other things. If you use small fonts and low contrast when designing web pages or PDF files, visually impaired people will not be able to distinguish them.

PDF products are universal and can be used by anyone, including people with visual impairments. However, for them to read the content of PDFs, you need to take care of this in advance. Making PDF accessible from the very beginning, when you just create a file or merge PDF from several ones, is easier than editing all the inconsistencies later. US laws protect people with disabilities, but e-businesses must also respect people with visual impairments and ensure that the information provided on their websites is accessible to everyone. Especially considering the fact that it is very easy to do this with the help of the best PDF services such as PDFGuru.