PDF Properties Menu
Academic Technology, Accessibility

Making PDFs more accessible

Are you a student who’d like your PDF to be more accessible? Are you a faculty member who is unsure how to make the material you scanned pass the Moodle Accessibility File Scan? Making PDFs more accessible can be easy. Here are a few quick tips.

Select a global language for your file

Folks who use screen readers—such as Job Access With Speech (JAWS), Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA), Orca, or VoiceOver—have plugins and adaptations to switch to different or multiple languages. However, the screen reader software won’t know to make any switch if there’s no language identified in the PDF.

  1. Open Adobe Acrobat DC.
  2. Open the file you want to change the language in.
  3. Click on the File menu, usually top left.
  4. Scroll down to Properties within the File menu.
  5. Click on the Advanced tab within the Properties menu.
  6. Select the document’s main language from the pull down in the last section of the Advanced menu.
"File" in the Adobe menu selected, with Properties pointed to, third from the bottom. You can also open properties by hitting command+D on a Mac.
“File” in the Adobe menu selected, with Properties pointed to, third from the bottom. You can also open properties by hitting command+D on a Mac.

Title your material

When material isn’t titled, there’s no way for it to be identified to any reader or any assistive software. It’s like flipping through a rolodex of your contacts and each name comes up as “Person.” How do you know which person? How will your peers know which file?

Title and File Name are not … the same thing.

  1. Open Adobe Acrobat DC.
  2. Open the file you want to give a title to.
  3. Click on the File menu, usually top left.
  4. Scroll down to Properties within the File menu.
  5. Click on the Description tab within the Properties menu.
  6. Fill in the Title field with the title you’d like to give the file.
Dialog box that appears once "Properties" is selected. The first tab, "Description," is selected. While "File" for filename is not editable, "Title," "Author," "Subject," and "Keywords" are.
Dialog box that appears once “Properties” is selected. The first tab, “Description,” is selected. While “File” for filename is not editable, “Title,” “Author,” “Subject,” and “Keywords” are.

The Title from the properties menu becomes part of the metadata that many technologies pick up on. Note that this field is not automatically filled by your File Name. Title and File Name are not, nor do they have to be, the same thing.

Tag your material

Tagging in PDFs takes a lot of time. What it does is gives the material structure so that folks using assistive technology can navigate the material.

More information

Making PDFs more accessible can be simple when you have a high-quality scan or good source material. Here are more in-depth materials for your consideration.