Accessibility FAQs

• Leave enough space between tables for wheelchairs/mobility aids.
• Provide accessible seating/space for wheelchairs during events.  
• Use live captions for presentations.  
• Describe visual information on screens and boards.  
• Turn on captions and audio descriptions for videos when available and requested.
• Label food and drink options with large, easy to read labels at events with food.

• Turn on live captions.
• Describe visual information on screen.
• Read chat messages aloud, especially if it contains a question.

• Email digital copies of flyers and posters.  
• Put alt text in all digital images, including digital flyers and social media posts. (See "Alt Text" under Digital Tools on this page for more information.)
• Include necessary details, such as date, time and location, in any emails and social media posts.

WebAIM's WCAG 2 Checklist is an important resource to help you develop and maintain website content. According to WebAIM (a leading global non-profit dedicated to web accessibility resources), web content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. The checklist serves as a guide to recommendations for making web content accessible. 

UW-Madison has an excellent resource for creating accessible documents. Learn guidelines for making Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Google Docs and Slides, emails, PDFs and Adobe InDesign files accessible.  

PDF Accessibility Decision Guide 

This guide can help you decide when to use PDFs, how to ensure accessibility from the start and how to remediate existing PDFs. 

1. Is a PDF necessary?
   • If YES: Skip to #2. 
   • If NO: Use live text on a webpage, Canvas page or document when possible.   
2. If a PDF is necessary, do you already have a PDF? 
   • If YES: Skip to #3. 
   • If NO: Create accessible content in Word first. Use headings, alt text, descriptive and meaningful hyperlinks, high color contrast and lists. Run the accessibility checker and fix any issues, then export to a tagged PDF. 
3. Check whether the PDF is digital or scanned. 
   • If digital: Skip to #4. 
   • If scanned: Skip to #7. 
4. Check the type of digitally created PDFs 
   • If you have access to the original source document (i.e., Word document): Skip to #5. 
   • If you only have the PDF version: Skip to #6. 
5. Digitally created PDFs: Access to the original source document 
   • Follow the instructions in the Prepare a PDF for Accessibility handout.  

6. Digitally created PDFs: Only have the PDF version 

   • Remediate in Adobe Acrobat Pro using the following features: Check Accessibility of PDFs, Fix Reading Order, Automatically Tag PDF, and Fix Accessibility Issues. 

7. Scanned PDFs 

   • Use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning to convert the image-based content to machine-readable text then remediate. 

How to Determine If PDFs Are Necessary 

• University of Colorado Denver: When Should PDFs Be Used in Digital Media  
• University of Colorado Denver: When Shouldn’t PDFs Be Used in Digital Media  

Helpful Resources 

• WebAIM PDF Accessibility Guide  
• WebAIM PDF Accessibility: Accessible Forms in Acrobat  
• Adobe Acrobat Accessibility  
• University of North Texas: Checking & Fixing PDFs for Accessibility Guide  
• University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Accessible Math (scroll to the section about math in PDFs) 
• Canvas Accessibility Checker  
• Microsoft Accessibility Checker  
• Word Accessibility Checker Video Tutorial (~four minutes) 
• How to prepare an Accessible PDF (UWRF tutorial)

UW-Madison has developed an excellent resource for learning how to to make emails accessible. Utilize the guidelines for making both plain text and HTML emails accessible. 

Please reach out to Kelsea Wissing, online content editor in University Marketing and Communications, at kelsea.wissing@uwrf.edu for information about Drupal access and authoring. 

Visit our Course Accessibility resource to learn more about the course accessibility checklist.