PDF Accessibility

PDF documents may be appropriate to use in your online course if the document is a form, article, historical document, or if the document has a complex layout. If the content you plan to share with your students does not need to be formatted as a PDF file, consider sharing the content on a Page in Webcourses@UCF.

Best Practices for Using PDF Files in Your Online Course

If you need to share PDF files in your course due to the reasons mentioned above, you will want to ensure that the PDF is accessible to your students. Creating accessible PDF is a time consuming process to ensure the file navigable with a screen reader. Additionally, PDFs require Adobe Reader in order to view them. One way to initially check to see if screen reader will be able to interpret a PDF is to see if you can highlight the text. If you cannot highlight text in a PDF document, it is not accessible. A screen reader will interpret an inaccessible PDF as an image, not text.

How To Build PDFs Accessibly

If sharing PDF files with your students is the best pedagogical choice for your online course, refer to the UCF Student Accessibility Services Digital Accessibility PDF Guide for tips on how to build an accessible PDF file