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Practical Accessibility for Faculty

Recommendations for Faculty for Scanned PDFs

To improve accessibility of PDFs faculty can:

  1. Obtain sufficient citation information to search for born digital copies.  (This is much more efficient than remediating scanned copies.)   
  1. For book chapters at least: chapter title, book title, year or edition. 
  1. For journal articles at least: article title, journal title, date or volume and issue, page numbers if original has page numbers. 
  1. Search the Library to see if a digital copy is available, and provide the permanent, proxy link.  Ask Us for assistance searching if needed.  
  1. For scans of print/hard copy book chapters, contact your subject librarian and ask if an e-book is available through the Library’s vendors.  If so, the Library can usually purchase these and make them available fairly quickly.  
  1. If a digital copy of your reading is unavailable, scans should be clean copies without skews, discoloration from copying and scanning, or marks that cover text, such as handwriting or highlighting.If you do not have a clean copy, try requesting one via interlibrary loan.  Submit the clean copies to Library E-reserves for accessibility remediation to meet standards such as providing equal access to assistive technology users for accurate reading order, identifiable sections, tables, endnotes, footnotes and more.  
  1. If you have PDFs that have been converted from other formats such as Word or Powerpoint, provide  the original.   

Although NY State regulation says all digital materials are required to meet accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2) when they are available to the class, if you have not received sufficient technical support for this and you know of a user with a disability who needs this, please contact Library E-reserves as far ahead as possible. We will prioritize remediation for accessibility of the required course readings, based on due dates.  In this case, we need citations and deadlines for readings.  Remediating scanned PDFs can take about three weeks, unless we have prior requests or extenuating circumstances.  

The Libraries' services do not replace any services or policies of Office of AccessABILITYPlease also contact them. Among other things, they provide support for accessibility of any hard copy books or materials your class is using, and specialized accommodations students may need beyond WCAG 2.2. 

What is a fully accessible PDF?

It may be helpful to know that, for a PDF to fully comply with accessibility standards, steps need to be taken using Adobe Acrobat DC (or competitors), which is freely available to CUNY employees, but complex to use.  Adobe maintains a very lengthy guide to standards for PDF accessibility. For example,

  • accuracy of text recognition needs to be checked, especially for PDFs scanned from hard copies
  • text descriptions need to be added to explain images, diagrams, and graphs;
  • the order in which the document is read by assistive technology needs to be checked, especially if it contains anything more than columns of text;
  • headings, links, footnotes and more need to be checked for identifiability and usability by adaptive technologies.

While it will not be practical for most faculty to fully check or remediate PDFs for accessibility, some may be interested to explore this further.

Additional Helpful Steps Faculty Could Consider

Students may request accessible documents through Office of AccessABILITY.  However, fully remediating some PDFs can be very complex and time consuming. Research suggests students with disabilities commonly do not obtain fully accessible PDFs.  Beyond the steps listed above, faculty can help by:

  • Avoid using PDFs when possible.  If available, HTML, EPUB, Microsoft Office docs and Googledocs are typically preferable and more compliant with accessibility standards.  However, if you are working directly with an individual with a disability, ask about their preferences if possible.  In some situations, they may prefer PDFs due to familiarity with the format or other reasons, if the PDF is relatively clear and accessible.
  • Understand that if PDFs are not fully remediated, students with some disabilities need extra time to have Office of AccessABILITY or others remediate PDFs. Understand students with visual disabilities and others may not have access to identifiable page numbers, section headings, table organization, footnotes, graphs, images and more in PDFs.  Communicate with students about this as you think relevant.
  • Offer to write descriptions of any images, diagrams, graphs or tables contained in PDFs that you consider necessary in order for students to have equal access to your intended learning outcomes.  Office of AccessABILITY may assist but faculty are sometimes the only subject experts capable of doing this accurately.  Preparing ahead is ideal. This is often done when a student with a relevant disability (e.g. a visual disability) needs this, but it can be time consuming when a need arises.