Increasing Your Impact: Best Practices in PDF Reports Accessibility

Session Abstract: In the growing world of dashboarding in IR, PDF publications, such as reports or Fact Books, are not always getting the love they need to be most impactful. Uploading or otherwise sharing digital versions of PDF publications can increase their reach, however, this presents new digital accessibility challenges. This presentation will cover an introduction to Universal Design, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, considerations in font and color styling, and other accessibility guidelines. The majority of the time will be spent reviewing digital accessibility tools and recommendations in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF documents through an example file. We will also demonstrate how to check ease of navigation using a free screen reading software, NVDA, and why optimizing PDF reports for screen readers is important.

Keywords: accessibility, PDF, reporting, fact book, assistive technology