Graduate School

Accessibility for ETD's

ADA Compliance

In accordance with PSU's efforts to make educational content available to everyone, we ask that you do your best to make your ETD accessible. Accessible documents will be usable by screen readers and other assistive technologies and will widen the scope of who can access your ETD. We hope that we are able to introduce you to creating more accessible professional writing as you move forward in your career.

We will help you through the process of learning about accessibility and making your ETD accessible. 

Questions? Please contact the Digital Initiatives Team at the PSU Library at pdxscholar@pdx.edu.

Format Your Text

Heading styles make a big difference in helping your document meet accessibility standards. Headings organize a document so that people can find the content they need, or understand how a document is laid out. 

All documents must have at least one Heading style. Use the Styles in Word’s ribbon to create real headings (instead of using big bold text or other visual modifications to create fake headings).

Heading styles are retained when converting to a PDF and creates bookmarks, which can be used by all to navigate the document in a clear and concise manner. Please follow our instructions below on how to save your Word document as a PDF with bookmarks.

Make Your Images, Figures, and Charts Accessible

Adding captions and/or alternate (or “alt”) text to each image, figure, and chart allows users with assistive technology to understand your figure without seeing it. This means that the caption or alt text for a chart must include enough information for a user to understand what a sighted user could see. For help adding alt text to an object, check out this short tutorial by Microsoft on adding alt text.

Create Accessible Tables

Here are a few steps to making sure a screen reader can process a data table properly.

  1. Click on the table.
  2. Click the Table Design tab on the home menu.
  3. Click on the Layout tab next to the Table Design tab.
  4. Select Properties on the left side of the menu tab.
  5. Click the Row tab and check the box to Repeat as header row at the top of each page.
  6. Click the Alt Text tab and add a title and description for the table.

Export an Accessible PDF

Editing document properties creates additional data about the details of a file. This helps with organization and identification of files based on their properties. It is also necessary to set the document properties to ensure that a document is accessible.

How to edit properties of Word documents

  1. In a Word document, navigate to File > Info.
  2. Properties are on the right side of the page.
  3. Add your document's title to the title field and make sure you are listed as the author and last person to modify the document.
  4. Right click on any authors you want to remove and select "Remove Person."

How to edit properties of Adobe PDFs

  1. With an Adobe PDF open, navigate to File > Properties.
  2. Add the title of your ETD and your name.
  3. Click on the Initial View tab and set the Window Option to show Document Title instead of File Name.
  4. Click on the Advanced Tab and set the language to English.

How to save from Word to a PDF with bookmarks

If you have used Styles to format your headings in your ETD, you can save your Word document to have bookmarks. This improves document accessibility. LaTeX documents automatically create bookmarks.
Steps:

  1. In Word, click the "File" tab and click "Save As".
  2. Select "PDF" from the Save as drop-down list.
  3. Under "Options," be sure that the option "Create bookmarks using: Headings" is checked.
  4. Save the document.