How to make PDFs accessible

Document titles and file names are not the same thing, but both are important. Neither are the main text heading on the first page of the document.

Your document title, file name and the main text heading in your document are likely to be the same or very similar. This is because they should all concisely describe what the document is about.

Document title

A document title describes what your document is about to the user. It's the first thing a screen reader will read out to the user. It appears in search engines so someone can decide if the document is relevant to them.

The document title must clearly describe what your document is about and be in the same language as the document's contents.

Good document title example: Guide to creating accessible documents

Bad document title example: 2019-09-24-doc-accessibility-v1.5

To check a PDF's document title using Adobe Acrobat, select 'File', then 'Properties'. Make sure you are on the 'Description' tab and review the document title text in the 'Title' field.

If you need to change the document title text, edit the text in the 'Title' field. Then select 'Ok'.

File name

The file name is the name that will appear in a folder structure such as your desktop, documents, downloads, SharePoint folder etc.

Try to avoid putting punctuation in your file name, as this will need to be stripped out before publishing the document on our websites.

You'll be asked to add a file name when you save your document.