Independent of whatever dazzling image you see when you open a PDF, hidden behind the curtain is an underlying text layer that may be completely mismatched. During our time together we’ll pull back the curtain on PDF construction, explore PDF alternatives, and practice PDF remediation with an exciting choose-your-own-adventure game.

PDF remediation is a complicated process. There are specific standards to be addressed and little nuances in how each PDF may have been constructed, but more challenging than that is the variation in tools and approaches available for tackling the problem. How does one handle footnotes? Should invisible text be used for the visually impaired? Will the tool I’m using automatically make decisions for me that I am tempted to trust without verifying? These questions and more are abundantly relevant for the higher education community, not only because of the ubiquity of the PDF file type, but also because of the way one’s approach to PDFs will impact or, at least, indicate how compliant their other file types and systems are, such as web content. In other words, one’s approach to PDF accessibility is a great litmus test for accessibility maturity more broadly.

This presentation will delve into the history and some of the specifics of the PDF file type to make sure everyone has a basic understanding of the visible and invisible layers at play. We will walk through an overview of common accessibility issues and the practical reasons they need to be fixed. And we will explore alternative file types that may make for better “presentation” ready documents and dreaming up together what features the ideal PDF remediation tool would have, independent of what the selected output format is. The main concern will be how remediation tools should not trust the hidden PDF layer and instead run their own character recognition every time.

Lastly, we will put our new knowledge to use with a choose-your-own-adventure remediation game that will follow the presentation’s theme. Attendees will be divided into two teams that will take turns identifying remediation issues in presented PDFs. Whether you are an everyday user of PDFs or a PDF expert, this engaging presentation is designed to have something for everyone.

By the end of the experience, participants should be able to:
• Explain the difference between the cover layer, the underlying text layer of a PDF, and the tag structure.
• List the advantages of PDFs and alternatives
• Identify the ideal features of a PDF remediation tool
• Identify the parts of a PDF that need to be addressed in PDF remediation

Destin Hubble

Accessibility Analyst at Indiana University-Bloomington

As an Accessibility Analyst, my day-to-day focus is on accessibility and usability, project management and metrics, development and documentation. However, the most significant contributions I’ve made to my greater organization have always been in the form of generalizing the problems we face and questioning the status quo in such a way that the problems can be better understood and tackled more efficiently. I'm naturally drawn to thinking through simplifying problems, who or what else is impacted, and which solutions will best address the highest number of issues. But having this approach also leads me down strange, new roads and causes me to ask really big questions, like, “What is a PDF really?” “Are there any alternatives out there?” “How and why did we become so reliant on PDFs anyway?” “Are the available remediation tools even focusing on the right things?” and “If there was a perfect PDF remediation tool, what would the world need it to do?”