How to make PDFs accessible

Page design and layout

You should make sure your PDF has a clean, clear design and layout. This will help people engage with and understand the information in your PDF.

You should also prioritise text and images that help people understand the key information you want to share. Don't include unnecessary information or lots of decorative visuals - this can distract or overwhelm people.

How to check page design and layout accessibility

Text formatting

How you format the text in your PDF can affect how easy or difficult it is to read. To make your text as easy to read as possible, we recommend checking you have:

Used a common font, like Arial, Calibri, Trebuchet MS or Aptos. Avoid overly decorative fonts
Made all text horizontal (no upside down or diagonal text)
Formatted text no smaller than size 12
Made sure it has good colour contrast
Avoided using block capitals or lots of italics - some people find them hard to read
Avoided underlining text (unless it's a link)
Broken text into chunks using headings, lists and white (empty) space
Made text easy to understand by writing in Plain English. Including good quality, effective images can help too

Redacted text

If you need to hide or redact text, check you have removed it from the PDF. Don't hide it by making it the same colour as your page background. This is because some tools and software will still be able to access it.

To check whether text in your PDF has been removed successfully (not just coloured the same as the background):

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro
Go to the 'View' menu, then 'Show/Hide', the 'Side panels'. Select 'Accessibility tags'.
Highlight the line(s) where the text has been redacted
Select the 'Options' (three dots) menu within the Accessibility tags panel and select 'Find tag from selection'.

If the text has been redacted successfully, you won't be able to select 'Find tag from selection' or will receive a message saying 'The selection was not found'.

If the text is still present, it will be highlighted in the tags panel:

Columns

You might have columns of text in your PDF that you want people to read one at a time - like in a newspaper or magazine. Check that columns like this aren't formatted using a table.

Tables should only be used to create columns if you want people to read row by row rather than column by column. They must also be formatted follow our tables accessibility advice.

To check whether a table has been used to create columns in your PDF:

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro
Go to the 'View' menu, then 'Show/Hide', the 'Side panels'. Select 'Accessibility tags'.
Highlight the first line of text in the column
Select the 'Options' (three dots) menu within the Accessibility tags panel and select 'Find tag from selection'. This will highlight the tag applied to the text in the tags panel (it will usually be a <P> or <H>)
Check above the tag in the tags panel to see if it is positioned within a 'Table' tag

Page orientation

We recommend using portrait page orientation instead of landscape. This is because:

Around 60% of people visit our websites using mobile. People are less likely to need to zoom in or change the way they normally hold their phone to view portrait documents.
The longer a line of text is, the harder it is for people to move easily to the start of the next line - especially if you need to scroll to see it. Portrait documents usually have shorter lines of text than landscape documents

If your PDF is landscape orientation, check that there is a good reason for doing this. For example, to layout an image or table that would be hard to view or navigate in portrait orientation.

Headers and footers

Including information in a header and footer in your PDF can help people navigate and understand your PDF.

However, headers and footers aren't accessible for everyone. This is because screen readers often can't detect and read out header and footer content.

This means that, if there is a header and/or footer in your PDF, you must check that:

The content in your header and/or footer is consistent - it should include the same or similar information on every page it appears on
Page numbers in your header or footer match the page numbers of the physical PDF. For example, the second page of your PDF should be marked as page 2. We recommend avoiding using roman numerals as page numbers, as most people find them harder to read and understand than numbers.
The content in your header and/or footer is tagged. If it isn't, any information in the header and/or footer must be repeated in the main page text (apart from page numbers)

To check if content is tagged in your PDF:

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro
Go to the 'View' menu, then 'Show/Hide', then 'Side panels'. Select 'Accessibility tags'.
Highlight the text you want to check
Select the 'Options' (three dots) menu within the Accessibility tags panel and select 'Find tag from selection'.

If the content isn't tagged, you will receive a message that says 'The selection was not found'.

If the content is tagged, it will be highlighted in the tags panel.

Watermarks

A watermark is an image that appears behind the main text of the PDF. It is usually a light colour or transparent. People usually use watermarks to mark documents as a draft or confidential.

We recommend avoiding using watermarks because they are usually difficult to see. Instead, state that the document is a draft or confidential in the page text at the beginning of your document.

If your PDF includes a watermark, you must check it:

Meets colour contrast requirements
Has a good text description that explains what it means. Check this by following our PDF images accessibility advice

How to make layout and visual reading order accessible

If you find that the layout or visual reading order of your PDF isn't accessible, you must fix it.

Edit the source document

Most PDFs on our websites were created in Word originally.

The easiest way to make the layout and visual reading order of your PDF accessible is to edit the source document (eg Word), and then reconvert it to a PDF.

If you need to go back to your original Word document, read our guide on page design and layout in Word. You may find our Word accessibility advice useful even if you used a different application to create your PDF.

Edit the PDF

You need Adobe Acrobat Pro to edit your PDF. You should only edit the PDF if you can't edit the source document. This is because:

It's usually easier to edit the source document than the PDF
Your PDF may have other accessibility issues that you can only fix in the source document
If you edit the PDF but then update your source document in the future, you will need to redo all the edits you made to the original PDF.

How to edit a PDF

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