PDF documents have massively powerful educational benefits due to their portable nature. Not only can you view them on the web but students can download them and carry them around on handheld devices such as PDAs and Smart Phones. PDFs have many uses, information may be distributed to students though this format, resources on the internet may be in this format and are available for download, possibly your students are submitting their assignments as PDF documents, and recently more and more mobile devices can handle eBooks, which might be in the popular PDF format. Therefore as we see more PDFs in our day-to-day lives, its important we highlight a few of the benefits and advise on how to utilise the benefits of PDFs so they can be used to their potential . As already mentioned, PDFs are very portable, they pop up almost anywhere and are readable by almost any device. Not only are they portable but if your documents are designed wisely you can enable them to be very accessible and optimise them for people who may have difficulties reading your documents.
Viewing PDF documents in Adobe Reader
One of the most popular tools for viewing PDF documents on desktop computers is Adobe Reader which is free to download and is available for PC and Mac. Adobe Reader has lots of accessibility features which may become useful to people with sight difficulties. However the potential benefits of these accessibility features may be restricted due to badly formatted documents. A high proportion of PDF documents are produced in Microsoft Word and saved as a PDF document before they are disseminated. By giving your Microsoft Word documents a good structure before saving them as PDFs, you could be increasing their accessibility features and give your users more freedom to choose how they view, navigate and find information.
Accessibility Tips
The following tips are for viewing PDF documents in Adobe Reader, and in some cases further tips are given to to use best practice techniques when creating Microsoft Word documents, these will enhance some of these accessibility features when later saved as a PDF document.
Changing the Font and Background Colours
This is an excellent feature for someone who may have difficulty distinguishing between the text colour and the background colour. Allowing the user to change the colours could simply decrease or increase the amount contract between the text and background, leading to the user having a better reading experience.
To change the font and background colours go to Edit > Preferences then select the ‘Accessibility’ tab.
Changing the Text Size
Sometimes text in a document can be too small or perhaps the user would like to see more of the document on their screen. Changing the text size for readability is very common, therefore this tip is great for people who have sight difficulties or people who might like to scroll less.
Use the zoom function on the toolbar or View > Zoom > Zoom To
Reflowing Text
If the user has difficulty reading small text and wishes to enlarge the document they may use the zoom functions (see above). However this can cause the text to flow off the left and right hand sides of the screen. By using the ‘Reflow’ option, the text is rearranged so that it fits onto the screen, this therefore avoids the users to scroll horizontally making it easier to read and navigate through the document as well as creating a better reading experience.
To find reflow go to View > Zoom > Reflow
Automatically Scroll
Automatically Scroll is a feature in Adobe Reader that does exactly what you think it should do. It automatically scrolls though documents, so rather than reading a page and scrolling manually, the page continually scrolls much like credits at the end of a movie. Meaning you can read continuously without the need to manually scroll.
To find Automatically Scroll go to View > Automatically Scroll
Read Out Loud
Users viewing PDF documents in Adobe Reader, have the ability to zoom into a document if they have sight difficulties, but this can cause further problems as the documents become harder to read, therefore the read out loud function can be very useful for people having difficulty reading the text in a PDF document.
To find the Read Out Loud feature go to: View > Read Out Loud
Bookmarks
Providing bookmarks in your PDF documents will enable your audience to find information easier through the inbuilt bookmarks feature of Adobe Reader. If the user wishes to see bookmarks, they will see a list of links to various sections of the document meaning they won’t have to spend precious time scanning each page trying to find the information they need.
This feature is particularly important in large documents.
To see a list of bookmarks go to: View > Navigation Panels > Bookmarks
N.B. Bookmarks are not enabled by default when saving Microsoft Word documents as PDF documents. Make sure all the headings in your Microsoft Word document have been formatted with ‘Heading’ styles. When saving your document as a PDF, select ‘Options’ and tick the checkbox marked ‘Create bookmarks using: Headings’. This will export all of the headings as bookmarks and will give your PDF documents a good solid structure!
For further reading and more hand tips, please visit JISC TechDis – Accessibility Essentials: Making the most of PDFs
