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What organisations would you recommend for PDF accessibility training?
Some of our teams rely heavily on PDF document formats. Whilst PDF isn’t the number one option for accessibility, it is currently heavily used. We are looking to have staff undertake accessibility training specifically for Word and PDF document creation.
I have found that Vision Australia provide training for this purpose, see more details here.
Please leave your recommendations.
While I don’t personally know of any other organisations that specifically train in document accessibility, I will say this: Document accessibility begins at the source. That is, make your original source document accessible, and the resulting PDF will also (usually) be accessible.
It is a pain in the neck to make already-existing PDF documents accessible. So I would focus on getting Word accessibility right, then all you would need to worry about on the PDF side is general tidying up - running the Acrobat accessibility checker, working with the tag hierarchy and checking reading order.
At the Center for Inclusive design also does training. We also have a software solution that helps organisations to remediated their inhouse documents faster and easier
More information below
http://centreforinclusivedesign.org.au/index.php/solutions/training/
Another good resource is the free self-paced inLearning training from Chad Chelius: Creating Accessible PDFs
I agree with you in having a good original source doc such as Word, but can be a bit more difficult with InDesign though.
I’ve found the Vision Australia courses to be good too.
here is also a free Adobe PDF Training by Rob Haverty Senior Product Manager, Document Cloud Accessibility, Adobe
@Cath I do certainly agree that InDesign is rather more daunting for making accessible documents (it’s a very fiddly process even for people who know how to do it!)… but as the original post mentions only Word and PDF I didn’t think to mention it. I would certainly never encourage new users to try it unless they felt reasonably confident with InDesign generally.
That said, for those willing to brave the steep learning curve, InDesign provides a great deal more options and more nuanced structural control over the PDF output than Word ever could.
Hi Tiarne
We do fantastic training for both Word and PDF documents here at the Centre for Inclusive Design, and not only do we do the accessibility training but we also teach people about how to think through an Inclusive Design lens so designers can truely understand why it’s important, and how they can make a real difference to people whilst embedding these skills into their daily practice. We would love to help you and your team, please feel free to contact me for more info on annie.ireland@cfid.org.au
Hi Tiarne and everyone!
Great question - we don’t currently endorse a particular training provider, but we do know that getting PDF accessibility right can be very tricky.
Our default position is to investigate why the document needs to be in PDF rather than a living digital format (blog post, webpage, etc) and looking to solve for systemic issues first.
Having said that - and depending on when the training is available - it might be worth while taking a look at our guidance on making accessible documents. There is always room for improvement and it is focused on moving from Word to PDF - but it may help plug the gap until you’ve accessed training.
Happy to hear you thoughts on how we might be able to help you more on this topic - please let us know!
We are also looking at ways to eliminate PDFs including
multi-HTML page groupings that us a previous/next navigation pattern
long document layouts with sticky table of contents
print-friendly plug-in to deliver a designed print layout rather than whatever the browser spits out.
Hi Hamish. I know this reply is to an old post however is there any chance there’s some up to date guidance on PDF Accessibility as recommended by Digital NSW? The digital design work I do for NSW Health requires the use of PDF’s so would be keen to see if any recent recommendations are available. Many thanks.
Hey Christine - I’m at Accessibility NSW and we’re definitely talking all things pdf. If you email me at Rachel.Maiden@customerservice.nsw.gov.au I can share some stuff with you (and also ask your opinion!)
