PDF & Document ADA Accessibility Training Series

ADA Title II Accessibility Training Series: PDF Accessibility

A school district's journey towards achieving full digital accessibility inevitably means handling Portable Document Format files, or better known as PDFs. Many schools use PDFs as a primary form of digital communication, but PDFs can represent some significant barriers for full accessibility if not built correctly. Most PDFs are not automatically accessible. They are missing the structure that assistive technologies like screen reading software needs to understand how to read the page.

PDF & Document Accessibility Series

In this four-part series exclusively for 4Schools clients, we will take a practical approach to PDF accessibility by working through real documents from schools. You can submit PDFs for us to review; we’ll select documents that demonstrate common accessibility pitfalls and send you the remediated document if yours is used.

This will be a fairly technical series, but we still recommend it for anyone that is responsible for maintaining the accessibility of their district’s communications.

We highly recommend attendance to all four sessions, since each session builds on previous sessions. However, we will make recordings of the sessions available to those that cannot attend.

1: Simple Remediation

In this session, we will demonstrate how to use Adobe Acrobat to perform simple fixes for common accessibility barriers in PDFs. We will work through a handful of real-life examples from start to finish to show the complete process of ensuring a document is accessible for all of your students, staff, families, and community.

February 24, 2026 at 11 am CT • Register for Session 1

2: Rebuilding Documents as Web Pages

In this session, we will demonstrate how to use CMS4Schools to move content from a PDF to your website. We will work through a handful of real-life examples of building accessible content within CMS4Schools and discuss the advantages of web content over PDFs for accessibility and maintainability.

March 3, 2026 at 11 am CT • Register for Session 2

3: Complex Remediation

In this session, we will demonstrate how to use Adobe Acrobat to troubleshoot issues that would ordinarily prevent you from fixing a PDF. We will work through a handful of real-life examples to show how different parts of a PDF can interfere with each other, and how to solve it when they do.

March 10, 2026 at 11 am CT • Register for Session 3

4: Rebuilding Documents from Scratch

In this session, we will demonstrate how to use Google Docs to recreate a PDF from scratch. We will examine a handful of real-life examples to identify when you can save time by starting from a clean slate, instead of trying to edit a problematic document.

March 17, 2026 at 11 am CT • Register for Session 4