[ATTW-L] Question about PDF Accessibility Checkers

[Samuel Dunn]

Hi Folks,

Let me start off with my question, then I'll give a little context: do you
all use and/or know about any free pdf accessibility checkers, online or
otherwise?

For final projects submitted as pdfs, I often ask my students to provide
documentation that shows they've made sure their pdfs are accessible. When
meeting on campus/in computer labs, I show them how to do this with Acrobat
Pro, but with this semester being all online and with campus computer labs
inaccessible, I've been looking for alternatives.

The tool I used and demonstrated in class when we discussed this a couple
weeks ago was pave-pdf.org, and it works well enough. But as students
have been finalizing their work, many of them are struggling with it. So I
told them I'd look for other alternatives.

To be clear, the students aren't going to be totally lost without an
external tool. We developed a checklist of criteria that they'll use to
self-assess the accessibility of their documents, and I showed them various
online tools to help them check specific aspects of doc design like
appropriate color contrast. But specifically with regard to screen reader
accessibility -- document tagging, reading order, appropriate nesting, etc.
-- I've found external tools useful in helping students see issues that
they may have missed, as well as providing them with validation that their
docs are accessible.

Thanks,
Sam Dunn
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