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Scholarly articles are a key course material, so what can faculty do to ensure accessibility? While º£½ÇÉçÇø does not currently have a PDF Remediation team, faculty check if accessibility tags are present and follow some basic steps to greatly improve functionality and readability for students who use screen readers. While some students who use screen readers are blind or low-vision, other students might use screen readers to listen to their academic content because they process information better aurally, they want to listen while working out, they process best if they can read with vision and listen at the same time, and more. This is why proactive accessibility is critical for quality inclusive education – it benefits all learners, not just those with documented accommodations.

Many journals still do not provide accessible PDF downloads, so in addition to notifying the library that the journal provides inaccessible articles, faculty have several choices on how to provide accessible articles for their students:

• • If the online version of the article is accessible and available directly or through the Auraria library, link to that version in addition to providing the PDF and be sure to mark the accessible version as such. Unsure if the online version is accessible? Request an Access Check from the IAG and we will check it for you!
  • Create an accessible version of the article within a Canvas page, and set it to be visible for students upon request, unless copyright regulations allow for modified versions to be available for everyone (e.g. open access articles). Each article should have information on its reproduction regulations. Ensure that your usual accessibility supports such as proper document structure (headings, list, etc), descriptive links, and alt-text are included. Ensure a link to the original article location is included.
  • Check for accessibility, add tags if needed, and correct tags and other PDF structure using Adobe Acrobat or another PDF tagging application. This can be a very time-intensive option, especially for faculty who are not used to using Acrobat and the tagging process, so consider if copying to a Canvas page would be more time efficient.

1. Open the PDF article using Adobe Acrobat (available through the Company Portal on Windows or Self Service on Apple).
2. Right-click/alt-click on the toolbar along the right side of the Acrobat screen.ÌýSelectÌýAccessibility tags from the context menu. This should open up the Accessibility tags pane on the right side of the screen. If not, select the new Accessibility tags button on the right hand toolbar.
3. If the pane displays “No Tags available,” move on to one of the following two sections: “Copy to Canvas page” or “Add tags.”
   
4. If the pane displays <Document>, move on to section “Review tags.”

If you already feel proficient in creating accessible Canvas pages by using the structure tools to apply Headers, Lists, Tables, and Alt-text to informative images, copying the article into a Canvas page will be a fairly straightforward process. Steps that may take more time include ensuring footnotes link correctly to the footnote area and saving the images from the article to upload to the Canvas page.

1. Use either your mouse or keyboard to select the article text. This can be done by selecting the entire article at once or by selecting in pieces.
   1. Selecting the entire article from the web version might also copy elements we do not want to include in our Canvas page, such as layout elements from the original webpage, so be sure to review and edit the entire article in Canvas before publishing.
   2. If selecting in pieces, review and edit the entire article in Canvas to ensure you did not miss any of the article.
2. With the text highlighted, use one of the following to copy the text:
   1. Ctrl+C (Windows) or Cmd+C (Apple).
   2. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Apple) to open the context menu, then select Copy.
3. Create a new Canvas page within the appropriate module, open the new page, and select theÌýEdit button.
4. Ensure your cursor is in the Rich Text Editor by either clicking or tabbing into it, then use one of the following to paste the text into the Canvas page:
   1. Ctrl+V (Windows) or Cmd+V (Apple).
   2. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Apple) to open the context menu, then selectÌýPaste.
5. Add missing structure to the text such as headings, lists, etc. Be cautious as the copied text mightÌýlook as though it has headings applied (such as larger text) but when you check the block drop-down, it will still say “Paragraph.”
6. If you copied the article from the web version, be sure to remove extraneous web artifacts, such as links like “Metrics” that are not needed to understand and read the article. Sometimes the “Check for Updates” button copies into Canvas very large; this can either be resized or replaced with a text link.

If you would like to also include a link to the PDF, be sure to label it as a “printable” copy. This indicates that the PDF may not be accessible, as “printable” indicates the user anticipates using vision to read the printed version.

If you are restricting access due to copyright, students only need to contact you and request access. Students do not need to disclose disability status to request this access.

Images, Tables, etc.

• Tables must be recreated using the in the Rich Content Editor. Images of tables are not accessible.
• Images can be captured using screen snip tools, then follow your normal process for to your Canvas page.
  • Windows: .
  • Apple: .

Note: Acrobat’s Auto-tagger feature does its best to identify what structures each element of the PDF should be (i.e. paragraphs, headings, tables, lists, links, etc.). However, creating truly accessible PDFs requires a human to go back and double-check each tag. PDFs which contain incorrect tags are not accessible.

1. In theÌýAccessibility tags pane, select the three horizontal dots on the upper right corner of the pane.ÌýSelectÌýAutotag document to begin the autotagging process. This may take several minutes depending on the size and complexity of the PDF.
2. If the autotagger ran correctly, the Tags pane should now show a tree of tags starting with “Tags,” then “Document,” then all of the structure Acrobat thinks should be there.

Reviewing and correcting tags is the step of PDF Remediation that takes the most amount of time and the most technical skill within Acrobat.

Some resources for learning to create accessible PDFs are listed below:

• “” by Chad Chelius on LinkedIn Learning.
• on .Section508.gov.
• Once you have a good base understanding of PDF tagging, W3.org has advanced guides for .
• The IAG is working on updating its guide to Advanced: PDF Remediation.

A basic thing to know is that PDF tags work similarly to HTML tags, such as tagging headings, paragraphs, table structure, lists, and more. We can carry over a lot of our knowledge about digital accessibility to PDFs. For example, Heading levels should be nested appropriately, with the title of the article being a Heading 1 “<H1>”, Topics being Heading 2 “<H2”>, and subtopics within topics are Heading 3 “<H3>” (and so on).

If a tag is incorrect, change the type by either double-clicking the tag to edit the text and type in the correct tag syntax, Right-click/Control-click the tag to open the context menu, then selectÌýProperties. In the pop-up Properties window, you can change the tag type in the Tag tab in the Type dropdown.

Lists will be contained in an “<L>” tag, each list item in a List Item “<LI>” tag, and then each List Item contains an optional Label “<Lbl>” (for elements such as numbering or bullets) and then a mandatory List Item Body item “<LBody>”.

While reviewing and correcting tags, also ensure the is accurate so that screen reader users are presented with the article in the correct order.

While you are working on getting your course materials accessible, be sure to include some prominent messages somewhere in your Canvas course (such as on the syllabus page and more) that students who encounter an accessibility barrier should contact you as soon as possible. Be sure you have them contact you via a method you check the most, be that email, Canvas message, or voice mail.

Remember, when it comes to accessibility efforts, we focus on:

• Progress over perfection, and
• Inclusion over compliance.

No generative AI was used for any portion of this article.