Remediation Options

Remediate a PDF Yourself

If you decide to keep a document in PDF format and determine that the PDF can be remediated in house, you should complete the relevant topics related to the PDF in the following LinkedIn Learning courses facilitated by Chad Chelius:

Creating Accessible PDFs LinkedIn Learning Course (Full Course Length: 8 Hours and 16 minutes)
Advanced Accessible PDFs LinkedIn Learning Course (Full Course Length: 6 Hours and 46 minutes)

Important Note

Although Chad Chelius states that he will show folks how to make a fully accessible PDF, depending on the complexity of the PDF, there may not be a way to actually make it accessible and usable for screen reader users. It's important to reference the Before You Get Started and PDF Usage Guidelines sections of this guide before remediating a PDF.

Submit a PDF for Professional Remediation Services

If you decide to have your PDF remediated by a professional remediation service, please use one of the PDF companies that the University has contracted.

Remember to Review Your PDF Content Before Submitting for Remediation

PDF Remediation companies can make a PDF compliant to standards, but that does not mean that the content will be usable. It's up to every department to review their content and determine whether that content needs to be redesigned from a usability perspective for screen reader users.

For example, a campus submitted a campus map to a remediation service in early 2025. The PDF remediation company applied all technical standards to the one page document, but due to the hundreds of data points on that one page, the document still was not usable by blind employees and students. The university spent money to remediate the document that did not fix the overall usability of the document and thus it was compliance, but not actually accessible. Due to the complexity of map content, the better solution would have been an accessible interactive html-based map.