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PDF Accessibility

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This page has been developed to help you, as a content creator, make your Portable Document Format (PDF) documents accessible in accordance with State guidelines using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. Please use this page when creating or editing PDF documents. When you send a PDF document to the Webmaster to be upload to the DMVA website, they will use an accessibility checker to determine if your document meets the guidelines stated above. If any portion of a document fails to meet accessibility guidelines, your document will be sent back to you for correction. DO NOT SEND SCANS OF PDFs. SCANNED PDFs ARE NOT HANDICAP ACCESSIBLE.

This is the list of WCAG 2.1 Techniques for PDFs.

  1. Applying text alternatives to images with the Alt entry in PDF documents
  2. Creating bookmarks in PDF documents
  3. Ensuring correct tab and reading order in PDF documents
  4. Hiding decorative images with the Artifact tag in PDF documents
  5. Indicating required form controls in PDF forms
  6. Using table elements for table markup in PDF Documents
  7. Performing OCR on a scanned PDF document to provide actual text
  8. Providing definitions for abbreviations via an E entry for a structure element
  9. Providing headings by marking content with heading tags in PDF documents
  10. Providing labels for interactive form controls in PDF documents
  11. Providing links and link text using the Link annotation and the /Link structure element in PDF documents
  12. Providing name, role, value information for form fields in PDF documents
  13. Providing replacement text using the /Alt entry for links in PDF documents
  14. Providing running headers and footers in PDF documents
  15. Providing submit buttons with the submit-form action in PDF forms
  16. Setting the default language using the /Lang entry in the document catalog of a PDF document
  17. Specifying consistent page numbering for PDF documents
  18. Specifying the document title using the Title entry in the document information dictionary of a PDF document
  19. Specifying the language for a passage or phrase with the Lang entry in PDF documents
  20. Using Adobe Acrobat Pro's Table Editor to repair mis-tagged tables
  21. Using List tags for lists in PDF documents
  22. Indicating when user input falls outside the required format or values in PDF forms
  23. Providing interactive form controls in PDF documents

For a full list of techniques for other formats, visit Techniques for WCAG 2.1


MVA Webmaster,
Phone: (907) 428-7234
Email: mva.webmaster@alaska.gov
Help desk: oitsupport@alaska.gov