Rethinking PDFs in the Age of Accessibility

Conveying information to your students is one of the most important and complicated tasks you complete in your classroom. As we shared earlier in the semester, accessibility is important for all your course materials; this week we focus on PDFs. As we ramp up for April 2026 accessibility compliance many folks understandably have questions around PDF accessibility.

It is possible to remediate PDFs but this process is labor intensive and may not always be the best pathway to addressing accessibility concerns.  The consensus amongst experts is that the best way to address PDF accessibility is to offer the same information in a non-PDF file format (such as a Canvas page, a Word document, a Power Point, etc.) What format you choose depends on the information provided and how you expect your students to take it in. 

However, when using PDFs is unavoidable, the path of least resistance depends on the type of PDF that you’re working with. There are two main categories of PDFs:  

Category One: Content you Created in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint and Saved as a PDF  (such as lecture slides, your syllabus, or worksheets) 

For these materials, the best pathway is to reopen the document in its original format (e.g. Word, PowerPoint, etc.) and make the files accessible using the built-in Microsoft 365 accessibility tools. Once you’ve made the Word or Power Point files accessible, you have a few options for sharing depending on your data protection preferences and needs: 

• Save it as an accessible PDF in Microsoft 365 (Windows and Mac) and run the Adobe Accessibility Checker in Adobe Acrobat Pro for a quick accessibility check. Please note that all faculty and staff at UNCG are eligible for an Adobe License that includes access to Adobe Acrobat Pro. 
• Share it as a Word or Power Point file and discourage edits by protecting it as a read-only file. 
• Create a share link set to anybody at UNCG with link can view but not download 

Category Two: Scanned PDFs (such as chapters from eTexts, scholarly articles, or news articles PDFed from the Internet) 

• Without an original source document, you may be able to remediate the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro or use other tools like UDOIT. However, the best pathway forward for these PDF file types are on a case-by-case basis for several reasons, primary among these being copyright considerations.