About Captions and PDFs

Captions and PDFs is a small guide to accessible downloads and media. It covers PDFs, Word files and slide decks, then video and audio. It ends with ways to check your work.

It's written for people who publish files but aren't accessibility experts. Think of an office manager posting a menu, a volunteer sharing meeting notes, or a shop owner adding a how-to video. Sentences are short. Each new term is explained when it first appears. The pictures are drawn for this site.

The facts come from web standards, from the help pages of the software makers, and from government guidance. Each page lists its sources at the bottom, and the facts link to them. When a page names a program as an example, that's only an example. This guide doesn't review or rank tools.

Some things are left out on purpose. Accessibility of ordinary web pages, such as alt text on a web page, color contrast, keyboard use and forms, has its own place. So do image file formats. This guide also isn't legal advice. Rules differ from place to place.

Menus and options change as software is updated. If a step doesn't match what you see, check the program's own help.

There are no ads, affiliate links or sponsors here.