From the course: Creating Accessible PDFs

Accessible PDF on Windows vs. Mac

From the course: Creating Accessible PDFs

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Accessible PDF on Windows vs. Mac

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- [Instructor] Although the Mac and Windows version of Microsoft Word are made by the same company, they unfortunately don't behave in the exact same way, nor do they contain the exact same features. In this video, I'll show you methods to create accessible PDF files from Word on both the Mac and Windows platforms, but for the remainder of the videos in this chapter, I'll be using Windows due to the fact that the features are a bit more robust. There's two main ways that we can create accessible PDF files out of Word, depending on what software you have installed. Now, one way we can do this is by coming up here and going to the File menu and choosing Save As. And in the Format dropdown here, we're going to choose PDF. Now, if you click on the more options link, and then click on the Options button down here, this middle section is the important area for creating an accessible PDF. So I'm going to create bookmarks based on my headings. I'm going to include the document properties, and, of course, document structure tags for accessibility. I'm going to click OK. I'm going to put this in my finished folder, and I'm going to call this one Win_Save. And I'm going to go ahead and save that to the finished folder. So that's the first method. Now, the second method, you're only going to be able to do if you have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer. And if you do, you're going to notice up here in the ribbon of Microsoft Word that you have an Acrobat tab. That Acrobat tab is a function of a feature called the PDF Maker and the PDF Maker is an Adobe plugin for Microsoft Word that gives us the ability to create PDFs out of Word and certainly, specifically, accessible PDFs. Now, if I click on the Preferences button, we have some preferences in here that we want to make sure that we enable. So you want to make sure convert document information is chosen. You want to make sure create bookmarks and add links is chosen. And then this is a biggie, enable accessibility and reflow with tagged Adobe PDF. So I'm going to go ahead and click OK. And now I'm going to click on the Create PDF button. And it's going to make me save my document, which is fine. And I'm going to call this one Win_PDFMaker. And I'll put that in the Finished folder as well. And I'll go ahead and click on Save. Now, for that method, it's going to actually automatically open the PDF for me. You may be wondering which method should you use? And that becomes a really tricky question because you get different results, I should say slightly different results depending on which method you use. One of the issues we've discovered in a recent update to Acrobat is that when it comes to tables in a PDF file, Adobe Acrobat is now adding a paragraph tag to table rows that essentially include all the paths that make up the cell borders. Between you and me, that is less than helpful because it's now my job to go in here and artifact all of them to make my document compliant. If I go out to the version that I used with the save method, you're going to notice that the tables in this method do not include that P tag. So I'm not saying one method is better than the other, I'm saying use the method that works best for your documents. Now, I'm going to switch over to the Mac platform. Now, on the Mac side, we can do pretty much the same thing. If we go up here to the File menu and choose Save As, from the Format dropdown, I can, of course, choose PDF. And I'm going to call this one Mac_Save. And down here, I'm going to choose best for electronic distribution and accessibility. So you can see that uses Microsoft's Online service. The second method, you'll notice that even in Word on the Mac side, we have an Acrobat tab up here. Now, if you come over here and click on Preferences, that's about all you get. There are no preferences on the Mac side. So I'm just going to click OK but now I'm going to click on the Create PDF button. And this is also using the Adobe Cloud service to generate the PDF file. So both methods are using a cloud-based service to create these files. So I'm going to say Yes. I'm now going to come back over to my Windows side and I'm going to open up those PDFs that I saved on the Mac. And just to kind of compare, you'll notice, the Mac save, when it comes to my tables does not add the P tag in the row as the Windows side did. And if I go to the PDF Maker that was make on the Mac, this method does add the P tag. So I do not have a definitive answer for you regarding which method you use. I think it's going to depend on the type of document you're working on and the intent that you're trying to get for your end results. So regardless of platform, you can create an accessible PDF file from Word on both Mac and Windows, use the method that works best for your platform and for your documents.

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