Adobe Acrobat & Adobe Acrobat Reader Accessibility Features-2

Accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat DC and Adobe Acrobat Reader DC fall into two broad categories:

  • Features that make the reading of PDF documents more accessible.
  • Features that help create accessible PDF documents. To create accessible PDF documents, you must use Acrobat Pro.
 

Features supporting the reading of PDFs for people with disabilities

 

All versions of Adobe Acrobat DC, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Acrobat Standard DC, and Acrobat Pro DC provide support for the accessible reading of PDF files by persons with disabilities.  These features include:

  • Preferences and commands to optimize output for assistive technology software and devices, such as saving as accessible text for a Braille printer.
  • Preferences and commands to make navigation of PDFs more accessible; such as automatic scrolling and opening PDFs to the last page read.
  • An Accessibility Setup Assistant Wizard; which provides a walk-through of accessibility formatting.
  • Keyboard alternatives to mouse actions.
  • Reflow capability; which temporarily presents the text of a PDF in a single, easy-to-read column.
  • Read Out Loud text-to-speech conversion.
  • Support for screen readers and screen magnifiers
  • Support for high contrast and alternative foreground and background colors
 

Features supporting the creation of accessible PDFs

 

 Acrobat Standard provides some functionality for making existing PDFs accessible. Acrobat Pro must be used to perform most tasks — such as editing the reading order or editing the document structure tags — that are necessary to make PDF documents and forms accessible (For more information, see Comparison of Accessibility Features in Adobe Acrobat DC Plans Links to an external site.).  These features include:

  • The ability to create tagged PDFs from authoring applications.Acrobat Adobe DC Pro logo
  • The ability to convert untagged PDFs to tagged PDFs from within Acrobat.
  • Security settings that allow screen readers to access text, while preventing users from copying, printing, editing and extracting text.
  • The ability to add text to scanned pages to improve accessibility.
  • Tools for editing the reading order and document structure.
  • Tools for creating accessible PDF forms.
  • The ability to set document properties, including titles, and expose them through the title bar of the application.