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Using Acrobat to make a PDF output from Adobe Express accessible

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Adobe Express is a great product with lots of useful and amazing design features. Unfortunately, it doesn’t currently produce tagged PDFs, so you’ll need to do some work in Adobe Acrobat Pro to make your PDF document fully accessible.

You can find out more about using Adobe Express itself at: https://it.osu.edu/adobe/

Here are some steps to take in Acrobat after exporting a PDF from Express:

  • First run the accessibility checker in Acrobat Pro by clicking ‘Prepare for accessibility’ and then ‘Check for accessibility’. A list of issues comes up in the accessibility panel on the right.Screenshot of where to launch the checker in Adobe Acrobat and the checker settings
  • Express doesn’t produce tagged PDFs so in Acrobat Pro you’ll need to right-click on the ‘tagged PDF failed’ issue and choose ‘Fix’. After the tagging process, you’ll notice other issues in the PDF.
    Screenshot of fixing the Tagged PDF Failed issue in the Acorbat accessibility panel results.
  • For missing alt text issues, you can right-click on the issue and choose ‘Fix’. A box pops up allowing you to add alt text to each figure that is missing it. The alt text should relate to the purpose of the image rather than be a complete description of everything in the photo. Try to keep the alt text brief to around 125 characters. If the image is just of decoration instead of meaningful content, check the ‘Decorative figure’ box.
    Screenshot of fixing a missing alt text issue in the Acorbat accessibility panel results.
  • While a lot of issues have an easy ‘Fix’ option, for some more complex you’ll need to do some research about how to fix and may need to modify things in the tags panel. For example, you may see a ‘heading nesting failed error’ that will require finding headings in the tags panel and updating them to the appropriate heading level to fit the document structure. If a heading skipped levels to be an <H3>, you could change it to be an <H2> in the tags panel, fixing the issues.
  • If you encounter a PDF with a lot of complex tag structure issues, be sure to save a copy of your original document so if the tag structure gets broken you have a backup to start over with.
  • Save your remediated PDF.

There is some more information about accessibility and Adobe Express in their VPAT. Hopefully in future versions additional accessibility improvements will be introduced. It would be great if a built-in accessibility checker can be added, similar to the one in MS Office applications and Adobe Acrobat. It would also be good to introduce an easy way to add alt text to images similar to what is available in Word and PowerPoint. Adding features like that would help Adobe Express stand out from competing products like Canva. For now, we’ll need to rely on using Acrobat to add accessibility to our Express PDFs.

You can learn more about PDF document accessibility in the PDF accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses.

Resources

Need more information about using Adobe Express?

Don’t have access to Acrobat Pro? Here are some other PDF apps that include accessibility checkers:

Document accessibility tips

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Using built-in accessibility checkers to find issues in documents

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Many of work with digital documents in the course of our everyday work. But how do we make those documents accessible to the widest possible audience? A place to start is to get familiar with the accessibility checkers available in MS Office apps like PowerPoint and Word and the checker in Adobe Acrobat Pro. These checkers list accessibility issues in a document and provide advice about how to correct them.

Checking MS Word documents for accessibility

To check your MS Word document for accessibility, go to ‘File > Info > Check accessibility’ under ‘Inspect Document’.

The accessibility checking panel that pops up lists issues and provides information about how to fix them. Different issues are fixed in different ways.

Missing alt text for images is a common problem in MS Office documents. To add alternative text on an image in MS Word right-click on the photo and choose ‘View Alt Text’. Then enter your alt description of the photo in the field provided. If it’s a purely decorative image check ‘Mark as decorative’.

When you’re exporting to PDF from MS Word using ‘Save as’, it’s important to check ‘Document structure tags for accessibility’ in the options so it will export an accessible PDF.

You can learn more about MS Word document accessibility in the Office document accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses. Below is a screenshot of where to access the accessibility checker in MS Word. Screenshot of the accessibility checker in MS Word

Checking PDF documents for accessibility

Run the accessibility checker in Acrobat Pro by clicking ‘Prepare for accessibility’ and then ‘Check for accessibility’. A list of issues comes up in the accessibility panel on the right. Some issues have an easy ‘Fix’ option, while for some more complex you’ll need to do some research about how to fix and may need to modify things in the tags panel. For example, you may see a ‘heading nesting failed error’ that will require finding headings in the tags panel and updating them to the appropriate heading level to fit the document structure. If a heading skipped levels to be an <H3>, you could change it to be an <H2> in the tags panel, fixing the issues.

If you encounter a PDF with a lot of complex tag structure issues, be sure to save a copy of your original document so if the tag structure gets broken you have a backup to start over with.

While you can remediate accessibility in Acrobat Pro, it’s best to fix issues in the original source document, in the PowerPoint .ppt or Word .doc.

You can learn more about PDF document accessibility in the PDF accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses. Below is a screenshot of where to access the accessibility checker in Adobe Acrobat. Screenshot of the accessibility checker settings in Adobe Acrobat

Checking MS PowerPoint documents for accessibility

To check your MS PowerPoint presentation for accessibility, go to ‘File > Info > Check accessibility’ under ‘Inspect Presentation’.

The accessibility checking panel that pops up lists issues and provides information about how to fix them. Different issues are fixed in different ways.

Missing alt text for images is a common problem in presentations. To add alternative text on an image in MS PowerPoint right-click on the photo and choose ‘View Alt Text’. Then enter your alt description of the photo in the field provided. If it’s a purely decorative image check ‘Mark as decorative’.

When you’re exporting to PDF from PowerPoint using ‘Save as’, it’s important to check ‘Document structure tags for accessibility’ in the options so it will export an accessible PDF.

You can learn more about MS PowerPoint document accessibility in the Office document accessibility BuckeyeLearn courses. Below is a screenshot of where to access the accessibility checker in PowerPoint.
Screenshot of the accessibility checker in PowerPoint

Digital accessibility essentials: Basic digital accessibility for all presentation

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Here are some links to my Digital accessibility essentials presenation for the Extension conference in December 2024

 

 

 

 

Digital accessibility essentials: Basic digital accessibility for educators presentation – May 2024

Here are some links to my Digital accessibility essentials presenation that I presented to a group of educators in Extension on May 2, 2024:

The presentation covers the Whys of accessibility (empathy & compliance), the Hows of accessibility (how to use assistive technology), and the Whats of accessibility (what to do to ensure good digital accessibility). The Hows of accessibility section shows how people with visual disabilities use screen readers to consume digital content and highlights how to get started with screen reader testing.

The screen readers mentioned in the presentation are the traditional kind that read live text from websites and documents already on the user’s device. Below are some links to a new group of other apps the actually read text out in the environment to help people with visual disabilities.

Information about other assistive technologies

Here are some other tools and apps, different from traditional screen readers, that can help the visually impaired: https://business.bemyeyes.com/10-essential-accessibility-tools-apps-for-the-visually-impaired

Apps like TapTapSee, Google’s Lookout, SuperSense, or MS Seeing AI use a smartphone’s camera and voiceover capabilities to take a picture or video of anything in the environment and identify it with a voice in real time.

What to do to ensure good digital accessibility

The presentation covers using the accessibility checkers built into MS Office products like Word and PowerPoint to check the accessibility of our digital documents. It also covers how there are similar accessibility checkers in learning management systems like Canvas that can help use ensure good digital accessibility in our online courses. For those of us doing blog posting as part of our educational efforts, the WAVE tool, is essential. It’s an easy way to check webpages for accessibility issues and is available as a browser extension.

 

 

Canvas course material accesssiblity variant of the presenation – Sep 2024

Scheduling Poll feature available in Outlook that’s similar to Doodle

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You might have used the service called Doodle to help find times for meetings before. Did you know that there’s a similar tool available in MS Outlook now?

Here’s how to create a poll in the Scheduling Poll in Outlook desktop. The article from Microsoft support walks you through the steps of creating Scheduling Poll.
You basically create a new email with the required attendees in the To field and the optional in the CC field. Then click on ‘New Scheduling Poll’ in the Message ribbon. It seems to work similar to Doodle.

Resources

Editing a SharePoint page and adding a Call to Action (CTA)

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How can you add a Call to Action web part widget to a SharePoint page?

You might wonder how can you add a Call to Action (CTA) web part to an MS SharePoint page?
To add a call to action web part widget to a Microsoft SharePoint page, you can follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the SharePoint page where you want to add the web part.
  2. Click Edit at the top right of the page to enter edit mode.
  3. Hover your mouse above or below an existing web part and you’ll see a line with a circled +, like this: +.
  4. Click +, and then select Call to action from the list of web parts.
  5. Start typing in the Add your call to action text here field.
  6. Click the Edit web part icon to access the Call to action webpart toolbox.
  7. Customize the web part properties, such as the image, the button label, the button link, and the alignment.
  8. Save the changes.

If you need more detailed instructions, you can watch this video that shows how to add a call to action button to a SharePoint page using the call to action web part. The video covers how to:

  • Add a call to action button to a SharePoint page using the call to action web part
  • Customize the text, label, alignment, and background image of the button

How to check your SharePoint page for accessibility?

You can check your SharePoint pages with the WAVE tool from WebAIM. It will point out a lot of accessibility issues. For convenience you can get a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, or MS Edge that allows you to check a webpage in one click.

Additional resources for editing SharePoint pages:

Videos about the Call to Action webpart in SharePoint

The SharePoint Call to Action Web Part – YouTube video
Dive into SharePoint Web parts: Call to action – YouTube video
How to add a Call to Action Button to a SharePoint page – YouTube video

Articles about the Call to Action webpart in SharePoint

Use the Call to action web part –
How to add an eye-catching Call To Action on SharePoint –

Articles about accessibility and SharePoint

Resources for creating accessible sites in SharePoint Online –
Add accessible content and links to a SharePoint Online site –

How to upload and link to a PDF into your Canvas course

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How to upload and link to a PDF into your Canvas course

You might wonder How can instructors link to PDFs in their Canvas courses? To link a PDF file in a Canvas course, you can use the Files area feature. As an instructor, you can upload one or multiple files, view all details about your files, preview files, publish and unpublish files, set usage rights, and restrict access to files. Here are the steps to link a PDF file in your Canvas course:

  1. Go to the course where you want to link the PDF file.
  2. Click on the Files tab in the course navigation bar.
  3. Click on the Upload button to upload the PDF file.
  4. Once the file is uploaded, click on the file name to open the file details page.
  5. Copy the URL of the file from the address bar of your browser.
  6. Go to the page where you want to link the PDF file.
  7. Click on the Edit button to edit the page.
  8. Highlight the text that you want to use as the link text.
  9. Click on the Link to URL button in the Rich Content Editor (RCE).
  10. Paste the URL of the PDF file in the URL field.
  11. Click on the Insert Link button to insert the link.

Congratulations! You have successfully linked a PDF file in your Canvas course.

How to check and fix the accessibility of a PDF before uploading to your course

You can use the accessibility checker feature in Adobe Acrobat to review the accessibility of your PDF and fix issues. To check and fix the accessibility of a PDF take these steps in Adobe Acrobat Pro:

  1. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
  2. Run an accessibility check by selecting Accessibility, Accessibility Check, Start Checking or Tools > Accessibility > Full Check.
  3. Read the report and follow the prompts.
  4. Fix the issues identified in the report.
  5. Save the PDF.

Alternatively, you can use the ‘Make Accessible’ tool in Acrobat to automatically fix some issues.
If you need more detailed instructions, you can watch this video that shows how to use the accessibility checker in Adobe Acrobat Pro to identify and fix some common accessibility issues in a PDF document. The video covers how to:

  • Run the accessibility checker and review the results.
  • Fix the logical reading order, bookmarks, tagged annotations, and figures with alternate text.
  • Modify the tags panel to correct the nesting and tag types of headings, links, and lists.

Please note that the accessibility checker may not detect all accessibility issues, so it’s important to manually review the document as well.

Additional resources

Here are some additional resources about linking to files in Canvas course:

Articles about linking to files in Canvas courses:

Videos about linking in Canvas course pages:

Collaboration in MS Word through comments

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You might wonder, how can you collaborate on a project to do list in Microsoft Word with comments?
One of the advantages of your organization using Microsoft 365 is that you can collaborate on a project to-do list in Microsoft Word by using comments. Comments allow you to give feedback, ask questions, and collaborate with others on a document. To add a comment, select the text you want to comment on, then click on the Review tab and select New Comment. You can also use @mentions to tag specific people in your comments and assign tasks to them.
Here are the steps to add a comment and assign a task in Microsoft Word:

  1. Select the text you want to comment on.
  2. Click on the Review tab and select New Comment.
  3. Type your comment in the comment box.
  4. To assign a task, type @ followed by the person’s name you want to assign the task to. As you type various people you collaborate with from your organization should be auto-suggested.
  5. Select the checkbox next to Assign to and click Post.

The person you assigned the task to will receive an email notification, letting them know they need to take action. You can also view and reply to comments in the Comments pane on the right side of the screen.

I’ve used this method to get feedback from project team members and assign certain people to review verbiage in writing projects. It’s a very useful feature of Microsoft Word.

Using Planner in MS Teams to manage projects

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TOC
What is MS Planner?
Advantages of MS Planner
What can you do in MS Planner?
How to create a new project in MS Planner within Teams
How to add a team member to your MS Planner project in MS Teams
How to assign a task to a team member
How to create a task card to send notifications to select team members
How to schedule a due date and how this will benefit managing project timelines
Using Planner in MS Teams resources

What is MS Planner?

Planner is a Kanban board style project management system (similar to Trello) where you have a series of columns on the board in which project cards are placed and move across. A Planner plan can be added as a tab at the top of an MS Teams channel. There are also other project management apps that can be added in Teams as a tab at the top of a channel, like Trello or MS Project. Most of the time team members access our MS Planner Plans through MS Teams but they can actually also can access their Planner plans in a web browser by logging in Planner that way.

Advantages of MS Planner

  • Already hooked into and organization’s Outlook and able to send them project notifications.
  • Can be easier to use and more intuitive than more complicated project management systems.
  • Helps organize project materials for an organization’s team in one place instead in a bunch of different network locations and emails.

What can you do in MS Planner?

  • You can add a new project card by clicking ‘Add Task’.
  • You can assign someone to work on a project task by going into the task card and clicking on ‘Assign’. Then you can start typing and names will be auto-suggested.
  • You can add sub-tasks to a project, like a checklist, by going into the card and adding them under Checklist.
  • You could attach related documents to a card.  
  • You can add due dates, priorities, and labels to a card.
  • You can add notes to a card, and people working on the project can add comments as they go along.

MS Planner can be very useful in managing an academic organization’s projects, like developing new programs or curriculum. A project starts in the To-do column of the Kanban board and then proceeds through In-progress and Completed columns. Or teams could add custom columns to better suit the project.

How to create a new project in MS Planner within Teams

  • In MS Teams, go to the Team that you want your project to be in.
  • Go to the channel you want your project to be in.
  • Go to and click on the ‘+’ button at the top tool bar.
  • Search for the MS Planner (Tasks by Planner) and click on it.
  • Create a new plan (project), give the ‘Planner plan’ a name and click ‘Save’.
  • Go in your new Planner plan tab and set up the project columns (buckets).

Some examples of column bucket names might be: ‘to do’, ‘completed tasks’, ‘in-progress tasks’, ‘needs reviewed’, content topics, sub teams names, or any names specific to your projects. You can customize your buckets to meet the management needs for your project.

How to add a team member to your MS Planner project in MS Teams

You can add team members to your project by assigning them to a task in a task card.
By default, all the members of your Team can see Planner projects created in the Team. You can assign anyone from your MS Team to task cards in an MS Planner plan in the Team. In some cases, if someone isn’t already in the Team, you’ll need to be a Team owner (or ask your Team owner) to add them (depending on the Team’s settings).
You can add team members (or request to add members) by going to the three-dot menu beside the Team name, choosing ‘Manage Team’, and then clicking ‘Add member’.

How to assign a task to a team member

  • Create a task card for the task you want them to work on.
  • Click on the Assign field in the card and type in the name of the team member(s) who you want to assign to the task.
  • Click on that person’s name that comes up, they are now assigned to the card.

How to create a task card to send notifications to select team member(s) and the benefits of using the comments field for notifying your team

  • Create a task card and assign team members to it.
  • Set a project due date and create a checklist.
  • Instruct your team members to use the Comments field to update the group about. which checklist items they have completed. The group assigned to the card will get email notifications about the update.

How to schedule a due date for a task and how this will benefit managing project timelines.

  • Create a task card and assign team members to it.
  • Set a project due date. Team members will receive email reminder notifications when a due date is near and if a task is overdue.

MS Planner will send you and your team members reminder notifications when a due date is near.

 

Using Planner in MS Teams resources

Creating new SharePoint pages to be used in an MS Team

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We can do a lot of editing of MS SharePoint pages inside MS Teams but we can’t create a new page there. We can only select pages to use in MS Teams itself.

To create a new SharePoint page to use in your Team you’ll need to access SharePoint in your browser:

  • In your browser: go to: https://buckeyemailosu.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx and login.
  • Find the ‘site’ that you want to create your new page in, like the ‘FCS Educators – FCS Database’ Team.
  • Choose New > Page and then select ‘Blank’ page.
  • Click ‘Create’ and give the page a name. Delete your name from the author box if you don’t want it there.
  • Hit ‘Publish’ to make your page available to Teams.
  • Go to ‘Share > Copy link to page’ if you need to URL of the new page to paste into a link.

Resources about MS SharePoint pages and MS Teams:

Create and use modern pages on a SharePoint site – an article from Microsoft with a video showing on to create a new page in Sharepoint. The video also shows adding images, sections, and web parts in a page.

How to Build a Website in Microsoft Teams – Using SharePoint! – a YouTube video showing how MS Teams can be enhanced by adding SharePoint pages.

How To Add a SharePoint Page To Microsoft Teams – a YouTube video showing how to add a SharePoint page as a tab in an MS Teams channel.

Use the SharePoint Team collaboration site template – an article from Microsoft outlining how MS Teams are powered by Sharepoint sites. At least one Sharepoint template page is included in each MS Team.

How to Create a SharePoint Team site – a YouTube video from 2021 showing how to add a SharePoint Team Site. MS Teams automatically creates an underlining SharePoint site when you create a new team.

How writing evergreen content can extend the impact of your blog

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One way to work more efficiently and extend the impact of your blog is to create what’s known as ‘evergreen content’. This is content that isn’t tied to a specific date or month, writing about subjects that are more timeless. Keeping up with blog posting can be a challenge if every post is date specific. It can be a good strategy to mix in some evergreen posts that will have a longer shelf life. Then you get a longer benefit for your post writing efforts.

Another idea, similar to writing evergreen content, is to write seasonal content that can be reused year to year. You might create winter, spring, summer, and autumn content that isn’t tied to a specific year, making it more reusable. It can be more efficient to preplan and schedule posts once a month or once a quarter, than to be always be publishing ad hoc.

Managing a blog is like tending a garden. It’s best to do routine checks and maintenance every month to keep your blog healthy like doing periodic content audits and accessibility checks. ‘Link rot’ is something that happens over time where links become broken. As part of the blog’s monthly maintenance, content managers should go through their site and look for broken links. WordPress makes it easy to spot broken links by crossing them out with a strikethrough. Blog authors can look for strikethrough links each month and update the URLs that they point to. Links become broken in websites because the URLs of external webpages they link to change over time from organizations adjusting the structure of their websites.

If you run a blog with multiple authors, it’s likely that web accessibility errors will pop up over time. It would be a good practice to run periodic accessibility checks as part of the blog’s monthly maintenance plan. WAVE is a free tool that is good at finding accessibility issues in individual pages. To check a large blog or website, site scanning services like PopeTech can be used. Many organizations at Ohio State have access to scan their sites with PopeTech. For smaller blogs, authors may find it more convenient to install the WAVE browser extension which can check a page for issues in one click. Forming a plan to train authors about accessible content authoring can also help lower the number of accessibility issues that pop up over time. Ohio State offers several online courses about web accessibility through the Digital Accessibility Services office (DAS).

Resources:

Evergreen Content: What It Is, Why You Need It, & How to Create It by Si Quan Ong – Updated on May 8, 2019.

Evergreen Blog Posts: Content Ideas, Examples, and Tips by James Parsons – Updated Jan 4th, 2022

Link Rot: What It is and How to Deal with It by John Hughes – Updated on Jan 25, 2023