Note: In general, it's easiest to start with a Word doc, Powerpoint file, etc. that is set up to be digital accessibility prior to exporting it as a PDF.  This greatly reduces the headaches that can tend to come with fixing problems in your PDF in Acrobat later.  (See our help doc on Best Practices for Creating Accessible Documents)

Let's get started!

1. Open your PDF file in Acrobat Pro.
   
   
2. Expand the All Tools menu and click on "Prepare for Accessibility" (located near bottom of the list).  Alternatively, if you have saved the link to your custom toolbar, click on the check mark icon to activate the "Fully Accessibility Check tool."
   
   
3. When the "Accessibility Checker Options" window pops up, ensure all the check-boxes are selected and hit the "Start Checking" button.
   
   
   
   
4. You'll see the Accessibility Checker panel pop up on the right side of the screen, with a list of issues that need to be fixed.
   
   • Title:  If your report indicates your title has failed, right-click on the "Title - Failed" text and select the "Fix" option.  Once you've added a title, your Accessibility Checker status window should show that the Title has passed.
     
                    
   • Alt Text: Alt Text is short for alternate text, which is the text that gets read out to visitors who may have a visual impairment and rely on a screen reader to navigate the web. Alt text should be a short, descriptive sentence describing what is in an image.  Expanding the Alternate Text error listing in the Accessibility Checker panel will reveal a specific list of images that are missing alt text. By right-clicking on a listing, Acrobat will jump to the problematic image, and you'll have the option to type in some alt text for that image. 
     
     - NOTE:  If the image is decorative in function (i.e., it doesn't provide helpful data or help to illustrate/clarify a point in the content), then you can designate it as such by checking the "Decorative Figure" checkbox.
     
                          
     
     
5. Once you've addressed issues with the document title and alt text, you'll want to double check the document's headers.  Click on the Tags option (blue circle below) from the menu at the right of your screen and examine the tag hierarchy. In the example below, the title of the document is tagged as a paragraph (<p>), when it should really be a Heading 1 (<H1>).  You can fix this by double-clicking on the "<P>" tag in the checker window and changing the "P" to "H1".
   
   Note: There should only be one H1 per document, which is reserved for the document title. 
   Also remember to avoid skipping heading levels (for example, jumping from an H1 to H4).
   
              
   
   
6. Next, if your document includes tables, you can double check they're in good shape. Tables columns and rows should have headers to be considered accessible.
   In the Accessibility Tags panel, expand any tables you have.
   
   - The top row of the table should all be headers (<TH>).
   - And for each row in the table, the first data cell should be a <TH>.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Another thing to check for is underlined text (which should only be used for url links) and remove it.  If there's a section of text that needs extra emphasis, you can use a combo of bolding and/or italicization to make it stand out.
   
   To remove underlines, select the "Edit a PDF" option from the All Tools menu. With your mouse, highlight the section of underlined text, and then in the "Edit" window, click on the underlined text styling icon to deactivate the style.  Close out the Editing window when you're done.
   
                          
8. Lastly, you'll want to check the reading order of the PDF.  In the right panel, select the "Reading Order" icon, and you'll see all the elements of your document in listed.  Click on item 1 (it'll be highlighted when it's selected), and then using the down arrow key, move to the next item. Check to see that the content is in the right order, and if you find something that's not in the right order, click and drag it to where it should be in the sequence.  A line will appear in the target destination space to indicate the new location.