{"id":832,"date":"2018-09-24T07:19:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.ocps.net\/presenceblog\/?p=832"},"modified":"2018-09-24T07:19:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:19:24","slug":"creating-your-accessible-pdf-from-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.ocps.net\/presenceblog\/creating-your-accessible-pdf-from-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Your Accessible PDF from Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that you have a Word Document that is accessible, how can you create a PDF that you can distribute to others outside of OCPS.<\/p>\n

Since the 2007 version of Word, you have had an option to change the file type when you save a document. In the Save As<\/strong> dialog, you could open the Save as Type<\/strong> dropdown (shown below) and select PDF<\/strong> to save the current document as a PDF file instead of a Word document (.DOC or .DOCX).<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, this option strips out the accessibility features from the document while creating the PDF file from the modern .DOCX Word format files.<\/p>\n

The preferred option, as long as you are using a computer from OCPS, is to use an application installed on your computer called Adobe Acrobat DC which hooks into most Microsoft Office applications as well as being able to run as a standalone application. We touched on this application in the post that discussed ways to check your document for accessibility issues. (https:\/\/wordpress.ocps.net\/presenceblog\/checking-the-accessibility-of-your-documents\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

From within Word, open the document you want to convert. Notice that Word’s main menu includes a ribbon tab called ACROBAT<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Open this ribbon and click on the first icon, Create PDF<\/strong>, to create an accessible PDF from a Microsoft Word 2007 through 2016 document.<\/p>\n

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You can accomplish the same thing by opening the File<\/strong> menu which shows the Microsoft Backstage options and select: Save as Adobe PDF<\/strong> from the menu in the left column.<\/p>\n

If you use a non-OCPS computer that does not have Adobe Acrobat installed, you can follow these steps to create an accessible document.<\/p>\n

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  1. Open the Word document as you normally would<\/li>\n
  2. Immediately save the document with a different name using the Word 97-2003 document file type (.DOC). You may get a message from the Microsoft Word Compatibility Checker<\/strong> indicating that you could lose some features when reverting to an earlier file format. For now, click Continue<\/strong>. However, you will want to compare the resulting document with your original (that is why you saved this version with a different name, right?).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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      1. With the ‘converted’ document still open, save the document a second time but this time select the Save As Type<\/strong>: PDF (see the first image in this post).<\/li>\n
      2. Before continuing with the save, click the Options<\/strong> button and make sure the following options are selected:\n