Hill College provides resources for authoring electronic documents for students, faculty, and staff. When creating documents using a wide range of authoring software, it's important to follow some basic procedures to assure the documents are readable by individuals with disabilities.

There are core principles for all documents. These principals include the following:

  • An invisible layer of instructions to guide adaptive technologies through your document. Instructions in ‘accessibility terms’ include:
    • Semantic markup (commonly referred to as “Tags”) which includes:
      • Headings
      • Paragraphs
      • Lists
      • Proper mark up of table data, column headings and row headings
      • Formulas
      • Links
      • Bookmarks
      • Table of Contents which link to the correct pages
      • Identification of Headers and Footers
  • Descriptive text for graphics, images and charts
  • Form fields which are fillable for all users, and will have field instructions for how the field is to be completed
  • Colour contrast and font size that meets minimum requirements

Learn more about PDF Accessibility

Microsoft Word - Creating a Document

To create an accessible document using Microsoft Word and learn how to use the built in accessible checker, click how to create an accessible document using Microsoft Word.

Creating PDF in Microsoft Word

Most documents are created in Microsoft Word and not in Acrobat. This being the case, follow the link for instructions on how to create a PDF in MS Word, please follow this How to create a PDF in Microsoft Word link.

Using Acrobat XI for Accessibility

Authoring programs can and are used for creating accessible PDF files, however, in order to evaluate, repair, and enhance the existing PDF file, Adobe Acrobat Professional is required.

For information on how to us Adobe Acrobat Pro, navigate to using Acrobat for Accessibility.

Accessibility