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Adobe Acrobat

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Acrobat Cheatsheet

Want to make PDF content more accessible? That’s awesome!

But hold on - if you’re reading this before Spring 2025 and are still getting familiar with digital accessibility, focusing on PDFs might not be the best first step.

PDFs are widely used, but their complex structures make them tough to fix without special tools and a good understanding of Adobe Acrobat Pro.

These guides will help you start the PDF remediation process, but we don’t expect perfection. Any improvement you can manage is a step in the right direction.

Recommended PDF Workflow

  1. Return to the source.
    • If you can access the original digital content (like Word, PowerPoint, a webpage, or Google Doc), make changes there and then recreate the PDF.
  2. Use Panorama in Canvas.
    • The 'OCR Overlaid Tagged PDF' option works best for making scanned PDFs readable.
  3. Find a new source.
    • Many electronic journals and databases have updated their older, inaccessible content.
    • Check the library databases for updated versions. You can also email refdesk@cocc.edu for help finding hard-to-locate materials.
      • NOTE: This doesn't mean new documents won't still need adjustments, but hopefully less of them! And using better quality documents is a UDL improvement for everyone. 
  4. Convert the PDF to MS Word
    • Fixing documents in MS Word is typically easier than in Acrobat, and is available to every COCC employee. You can convert a PDF to Word by either:
      1. Using the 'OCR Reconstructed DOCX' option in Panorama to create a .docx file.
      2. Visiting the Barber Library and using the KIC scanner on the first floor to create a Rich Text file that you can open in Word. (This works best for scanning textbooks or printed handouts; for previously scanned PDFs, use Panorama for better results.)