Module 0: Introduction & Background

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Voice Over (VO): Accessible Electronic Document Community of Practice, AED-COP.

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VO: You are watching how to test and remediate PDFs for accessibility using Adobe Acrobat DC. This is Module 0, Background and Introduction. This video is one in a series showing how to make a PDF, Section 508 Conformant.

VO: Background. In October 2012, subject matter experts from several federal agencies established the Accessible Electronic Document Community of Practice, or AED-COP, with the goal of improving accessible content, advancing the field of accessibility, and creating testing and authoring artifacts that are reusable across many agencies.

VO: As part of this effort, this series of videos was created to assist individuals in testing and remediating portable document format, or PDFs, for Section 508 Conformance. The guidance provided in this course is based on the Section 508 Baseline Test Guide for PDFs, and the Section 508 PDF Checklist, authored by the AED-COP.

VO: For more information on the AED-COP, and to download the latest AED-COP guidance, or to gain access to a detailed test process, visit www.section508.gov/refresh-toolkit/test.

VO: Please note, this document does not support the process of evaluating or remediating life-cycle documents for Section 508 conformance, nor does it apply to documents that contain scripts.

VO: Introduction. Federal agencies create millions of documents each year to post online. One of the most popular document formats used to publish documents to the web are PDFs.

VO: The PDF file type is a popular choice as these documents maintain a common look and feel regardless of the electronic device used to view them.

VO: Unfortunately, the majority of PDFs created do not comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which is a federal law stating that "All information and computer technology must be accessible to persons with disabilities."

VO: If a PDF is not Section 508 Conformant, persons with disabilities who utilize assistive technology, such as screen readers or speech-to-text tools, may find it difficult or impossible to access essential or critical information.

VO: Therefore, it is each author's responsibility to ensure that their PDFs are fully Section 508 Conformant. When you follow the accessibility requirements provided in this course, you are providing a document that allows individuals with disabilities to:

1. Access the important information that you are publishing, and
2. Gain access to information in a comparable way as their non-disabled peers.

VO: This video series was created to assist document creators in evaluating and converting both scanned and non-scanned documents into Section 508 Conformant PDFs. Individuals will learn how to discover accessibility issues by manually examining different components of PDFs, such as content layer, tag layer, and logical reading order.

VO: They will also learn to utilize Adobe Acrobat's accessibility checker to validate and remediate identified accessibility problems.

VO: This course has been broken down into the following modules to make it easier to learn how to create, test, and remediate Section 508 Conformant PDFs:

• Module 0 - Background and Introduction
• Module 1 - What is a PDF? Learning Objectives
• Module 2 - Testing a PDF for Accessibility
• Module 3 - Remediating PDFs for Accessibility
• Module 4 - Converting Scanned Documents into Section 508 Conformant PDFs

VO: By the end of this series, we will learn:

• What is a PDF?
• How do I test a PDF for accessibility?
• And, how do I remediate a PDF for accessibility?

VO: Thank you for watching Module 0. You are encouraged to watch the other modules in this video series and revisit modules to gain a mastery of the information provided.

VO: To learn more about Section 508, visit www.section508.gov.

VO: This video is a product of the Accessible Electronic Document Community of Practice, Chief Information Officers Council, and the Federal Aviation Administration.