PDF Accessibility: Considerations and Best Practices for Learning Objects and Other Library Materials

Abstract

Despite concerns raised about accessibility compliance, libraries and vendors still commonly create and use PDFs for information sharing and information literacy instruction, a trend heightened by the recent increase in online learning. Like other formats, PDF’s require remediation, specifically in the form of tagging, to be transformed into an accessible instructional format. Academic librarians are increasingly looking to enhance the inclusivity of services and support, drawing on established work from domains such as Universal Design for Learning. What remains challenging is making the transition from theory to practice. Appropriately tagging PDFs for accessibility represents a concrete step for practitioners keen to enact inclusive instructional practice. This poster shares the best practices, training, and decision making framework a collaborative library instructional design team has developed, tested, and implemented to effectively tag PDFs for accessibility, including lessons learned and still open questions for debate. This presentation is of particular importance, both because of the wide use of the PDF format, but also the need for libraries to develop tagging practices that reflect some of our unique content needs like citations and database screenshots often used in library-created PDFs.