Accessible by Design: PDF Practices that Promote Digital Accessibility
Sponsored by the USM Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation
Location
Online
Date & Time
December 5, 2025, 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Description
Portable Document Formats (PDFs) are one of the most frequently used types of documents in higher education and one of the most complicated to make accessible. This session is designed to help participants get started with remediating inaccessible PDFs and building accessible PDFs going forward. They'll experience how to use the automated tools Adobe provides to evaluate and modify PDFs to be more accessible with just a few clicks!
After attending the session, participants will be able to:
- Run Adobe's Accessibility Checker
- Interpret accessibility reports from Adobe
- Fix common issues through Adobe tools such as 'Make Accessible' and 'Scan & OCR'
- Navigate Adobe's provided explanations for more complex issues
- Create alternative text and other accessibility necessities directly in their PDFs
How to Register
Date: Friday, December 5, 2025
Time: 10 AM - 11 AM, ET
Location: Zoom (link will be provided after registration)
Register online with USM (available through Nov 21)
Open to all Maryland Higher Education colleagues, including faculty, staff, administrators, and teaching/graduate assistants.
Accommodation Guidelines:
USM is committed to making events accessible to all participants. For this session:
- Live captions will be provided during the event
- A transcript will be available in real-time
- A recording of the session will be made available afterward
- Please note that requests for ASL interpretation should be made by Nov 21, 2025. USM will make every effort to support requests made after this date.
Please feel free to share this email with your colleagues and encourage them to attend.
This event is organized by the USM Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation in conjunction with the USM Digital Accessibility Work Group. Questions may be directed to cai@usmd.edu.
