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Criterion 508 Notes!

Vol. 5, Issue 1, March 2005

• The Importance of Style Guides for Section 508 Compliant PDF Documents and Fillable Forms

The Importance of Style Guides for Section 508 Compliant PDF Documents and Fillable Forms

A Style Guide is an important requirement to achieve Section 508 compliant PDF documents and fillable forms. A document's Style Guide takes into consideration the various requirements of Section 508 as well as the applicability of the client's implementation requirements (Level of Effort and Associated Costs). A project's Style Guide will be the baseline guide for development of Section 508 compliant PDF documents or fillable forms created or modified during the course of a project.

As a project moves from development to implementation, the project team should provide ongoing recommendations for updating the Style Guide based on changing client requirements and/or any updates to the Section 508 standards. The project team should be responsible for identifying and remediating any accessibility barriers related to the development of Section 508 compliant PDFs during the project's implementation phase. Common barriers to accessible PDF documents and fillable forms include:

• Cannot be read by screen readers
• Will not reflow properly for screen magnification
• Are not inherently navigable
• Do not provide alternative text for images

Section 508 compliant PDFs and fillable forms should contain the following features:

• Structural tagging
• Alternative text for images
• Compatibility with a variety assistive technologies
• Readable by screen readers
• Logical Text Reading order can be identified
• Table Descriptions
• Reflowability (from large to small text)
• Color/Contrast alternatives
• High character recognition that provides higher level of accuracy
• Text formatting and paragraph wrapping maintained in all exported formats