As we noted in prior sections of this unit, the path to creating accessible documents is full of potholes. One particular issue is the software students will need to open a file--if you provide them a Word document, they will need Word to read it. In addition, if their operating system or version of Word is not the same as yours, there is no guarantee the document will look the same to them as it did to you!

Converting your Word, Google Docs, PowerPoint, and Google Slides documents (Excel and Google Sheets, too!) to a PDF eliminates the software issue. With PDFs, your students can download the free Adobe Reader, allowing universal access to the course material, and, the document will look exactly the same as when you designed it.

There is, however, a caveat:

Your PDF is only as accessible as the original document.

In other words, an accessible PDF is built from an accessible Office or Google document. If the original file has an accessibility issue, that issue will be passed on in the PDF format. There are two options for dealing with this:

Ensure that your documents are 100% accessible before you convert them to PDF; or
"Fix" the accessibility issues in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

The following tabs on this page will walk you through converting Office for Windows files into PDFs, converting Office for the Mac, and converting Google docs. In the next section of the unit we'll cover using Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Windows
Mac
Google

Windows

The beauty of the Microsoft products is their consistency. Whether you are converting a Word doc or PowerPoint, the process is going to be very similar:

Make sure your original "source" file (from Word or PPT) is accessible.
Select File, then Save As.
Choose where you want the file to be saved.
Select PDF as the Save As type.
Select Options, then check the box for Document structure tags for accessibility.
Select OK.

It never hurts to check the final PDF, as well. In the next section, we'll learn more about assessing the accessibility of PDFs!

Additional Windows Resources

Microsoft Office Tutorials: Save or Convert to PDF

Mac

Remember, to end up with an accessible PDF, you have to begin with an accessible file. In addition, if you are using any version of Microsoft Word for the Mac that is prior to 2016, you can't convert your document to an accessible PDF from Word or PPT. You will need to import your documents to another tool (Google docs or OpenOffice, for instance) in order to create an accessible PDF. For this reason, we strongly suggest all Mac users upgrade to MS Office for the Mac, 2016.

** IMPORTANT INFORMATION **

We want to be very clear here. MS Office products designed for the Mac prior to 2016 will let you save your documents as PDFs, but, these PDFs are not accessible!

How can that be, you might ask? Well, there are two types of PDFs--image only, and tagged. Image only PDFs are like a picture of the original document. It looks the same, but the text has actually been changed to an image. You can't edit the text, and, more importantly, the screen reader won't see text--instead, it will detect a single image. It is, essentially, a photo of the original document.

Tagged PDFs, on the other hand, are text documents, and the 'tags' retain the important formatting information so useful to screen readers.

In the MS Office for Mac products prior to 2016, the conversion process turned the original document into an image-only PDF--no text, no tags, just the image. It looked great, but it was useless to students using assistive technology!

So, here's how you can ensure your MS Office for Mac documents are converted to accessible PDFs:

Check your version of Office to be sure you are using the 2016 version (select Word from the menu bar, and then About).
Select Save As from the File menu, name your file, and choose the folder in which it will be saved.
For File Format, choose PDF.
Select Best for electronic distribution and accessibility.
Select Export.

It never hurts to check the final PDF, as well. In the next section, we'll learn more about assessing the accessibility of PDFs!

Microsoft Word for Mac license Word export format

Screenshot of Mac save dialog box showing PDF file type.

Additional Mac Resources

Microsoft Office Tutorials: Save or Convert to PDF

Google

To convert a Google doc to a PDF:

Select Download as from the drop-down list in File menu.
Select PDF document (.pdf) from the drop-down list.
Save the converted document to your computer.

Download As is located under File tab

Before you click "Next" please read through all of tabbed pages.

Additional Resource for CCC Faculty and Staff

Through the Vision Resources Center (formerly the Professional Learning Network (PLN)) all California Community College faculty and staff have access to LinkedIn Learning's (formerly Lynda.com) entire library of tutorials for FREE.

Vision Resource Center (formerly the Professional Learning Network)

Learning Home at the VRC