Creating Accessible Outreach

Accessible Digital Content

Accessible Newsletter 

Fitchburg State Library

Florida Library Webinars  

Google

Microsoft

W3C

How to make your PDF accessible

Watch this video from our IT department to learn more. Copies of the slides are also available.

Create and Verify PDF accessibility

  1. Open your document in Adobe Acrobat Pro
  2. On the right side of your screen you have your Tools. If you don’t have many or any tools, you can add them by clicking on the Add Tools button at the bottom.
  3. Click on the Action Wizard Tool and click the option to Make Accessible.
  4. A prompt will come up Files to be Processed:
  5. You will see your current file listed and an option to add more files.
  6. Click START.
  7. The Action Wizard will lead you through making your document accessible.
  8. After you have finished checking and fixing your document, save your changes.

More Information to make accessible content

Adding Captions to ScreenPal

Users have the ability to add captions files to the video during the publishing process. A standard captions file (format as .sbv or .srt) can be created and added when publishing to ScreenPal or to a video file.

  1. Speech-to-text automatically generates captions for your video. The tool picks up the audio from your video and creates captions.

If you select this option, use the dropdown menu to select the correct language for your captions. This option is available with our Fitchburg State Plan (not a free account.)

  1. Blank captions allows you to manually create your own captions in the video editor.

On ScreenPal, press “start” to continue creating your own personalized captions. A list of audio sections from your video will appear. Click the play button on the first section to hear the audio from that part of the video. Then type the corresponding caption in the textbox. The audio will pause when you start typing, so just hit enter to resume.

How to Add Captions in ScreenPal

For more on ScreenPal, including our in-house user guide, please refer to our ScreenPal page.

Adding Captions to YouTube Videos

As the owner here are ways to add captions to YouTube videos.

Use the YouTube Caption Editor

YouTube automatically generates captions for videos when they’re uploaded using speech recognition technology. These machine-generated captions are rarely fully accurate and will require you to manual edit them.

Add Captions Yourself

You can add captions directly into YouTube or attach a file with captions. In addition, there are free tools available online that make it possible and easy to caption your own video. You can caption your own videos using one of several free online tools, including:

To add captions to videos on YouTube, you must be the owner of the YouTube account where the video is hosted. Please refer to the instructions above as the specific steps for uploading your caption file change frequently as the YouTube interface is upgraded.

When you create a newsletter and post it on Instagram or Facebook the content is posted as a picture and not as a document.  Offer a way to request an accessible copy of that document.  An example might be a statement “To request an accessible copy of this document, please email janedoe@fitchburgstate.edu”. 

In Facebook if you create a Group you have the opportunity to upload PDF documents.  

  • The only downside to this is that you have to advertise for people to request to join your group, or you can invite them.  Then they can see this PDF newsletter.

In Instagram you can type in the entire content of your page as Alt Text.  To do this: 

  1. On the page where you Write a caption, Tag People or Add Location at the bottom of the options there is Advanced Settings.
  2. Click on Advanced Settings
  3. Under Accessibility –”Write Alt Text”
  4. Start typing, or use the microphone feature on your phone and just read everything on the corresponding picture of that page.