Document Accessibility Resources (Word, PowerPoint, PDF & more)

Word

Whether you are creating a Word document or publishing a PDF that started in Word, the easiest way is to ensure that the original Word document is accessible when you create it. To do that, see:

PowerPoint

Similar to Word, PowerPoint presentations should be made accessible in PowerPoint before converting to PDF. This will minimize the amount of work that needs to be done in Acrobat. See:

PDF

PDF documents can be made accessible if you implement the appropriate techniques (although it's always faster and easier to make your Word, PowerPoint, etc., original accessible before converting to PDF). The following resources describe how:

InDesign

The only effective way to make accessible PDF documents from Adobe InDesign is to address accessibility in InDesign. See the guidance at:

LiveCycle Designer

While form fields can be added to any PDF using Adobe Acrobat (resulting in what is sometimes called an "AcroForm"), Adobe's AEM (formerly LiveCycle) Designer is specifically designed to create forms. For best results, forms should be created from scratch in Designer using the techniques described in:

Color Contrast Checker

This free software can be used to test color contrast in any document: