HW6: Accommodations Policies & Document Remediation
CS302, Spring 2026

Your course materials need to be accessible to all students. In this assignment, you will learn about disability accommodation policies, audit PDF files used in your course, and practice document remediation. You will also reflect on how UC Berkeley’s Disabled Students’ Program (DSP) serves students with disabilities.

Context: As of April 24, 2026, all digital course materials at UC Berkeley — including content inside bCourses — must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards under the updated ADA Title II requirements.

Required Reading

Read these three articles and leave at least 1 comment on each in the shared document:

Part 1: PDF Document Remediation

1a. Select Two PDF Files

Pick 2 PDF files currently used in your course (e.g., homework, lab, lecture slides, exam, syllabus). These should be files that students are expected to read or interact with.

1b. Audit Your PDFs

Run each PDF through at least two of the following checkers:

  1. pdf4wcag.com — Select the WCAG 2.2 profile. Also try the WCAG 2.2 Human and Machine test, which uses an experimental AI model to evaluate semantic tag usage.
  2. veraPDF — The open-source industry-standard validator. You can use the web demonstrator or install locally (requires Java). Select the PDF/UA-1 validation profile.
  3. Adobe Acrobat Pro — Use the built-in Accessibility Check (Full Check) under Tools → Accessibility. Available via UC Berkeley software. See Checking PDFs in Acrobat below.

Optional: If you are a TA or instructor of record in a bCourses site, you can also use the Ally accessibility checker built into bCourses. Ally provides per-file accessibility scores and remediation suggestions. You can generate an Ally Instructor Report to see all issues across your course site. (Note: Ally is only available if you have an instructor or TA role in the course.)

1c. Attempt Remediation

Based on the audit results, try to fix some of the issues you found. You don’t need to spend too much time getting things perfect — the goal is to understand the process and the challenges involved.

Some approaches to try:

See Guidelines and Testing of PDF Files below for more detail.

Part 2: Written Responses

Answer the following on the responses document:

2a. Reflections on DSP and Accommodations

Based on the readings and your own experiences at Berkeley, do you think the DSP program is serving students well? What changes, if any, would you like to see? You may also want to review the Instructor Guide to DSP Accommodations.

2b. Draft Extension & Accommodation Policies

Draft some sample policies for assignment extensions and accommodations (labs, homework, projects). What kinds of late policies would you choose? Write a few sentences explaining why you think these are good. Consider:

2c. PDF Remediation Report

For each of the two PDFs you tested:

  1. Link to the file (or describe it if not publicly available).
  2. What was the source format? (Word, LaTeX, Typst, Google Docs, HTML, scanned, unknown, etc.)
  3. What were the results of the accessibility audit? Summarize the top issues found.
  4. What remediation steps did you attempt, and what was the result?

2d. Process Reflection

After auditing your course website (HW5) and now auditing and remediating PDF files, share your experiences about the process. What was harder than expected? What tools were most or least helpful? What would you change about how your course produces documents?

Guidelines and Testing of PDF Files

Why PDFs Are Hard for Accessibility

PDFs were designed as a fixed-layout print format — they describe where content appears on a page, not what it means. Without explicit structure tags, a PDF is essentially a collection of positioned glyphs and images. Screen readers cannot determine reading order, distinguish headings from body text, or interpret tables without this semantic layer. This is why the UC Berkeley Digital Accessibility Program recommends using HTML, Google Docs, or other editable formats when possible, and treating PDF as a last resort.

That said, PDFs are often necessary for exams, formal handouts, and archival documents. When you must use PDF, the goal is to produce a tagged PDF that conforms to PDF/UA (ISO 14289) and WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

Checking PDFs in Acrobat

If you have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro (available via software.berkeley.edu):

  1. Open the PDF and go to Tools → Accessibility.
  2. Run Full Check (Accessibility Check). Select WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard.
  3. Review the results panel — issues are categorized (document, page content, forms, tables, etc.).
  4. Use the Reading Order tool to inspect and fix the tag structure.
  5. Use the Set Alternate Text tool for images.
  6. Check the Tags panel to verify the document’s logical structure tree.

Important: Acrobat’s checker does not catch all issues. A passing result in Acrobat does not guarantee full accessibility — always also test with a screen reader.

Testing with Screen Readers

Testing with an actual screen reader is the most reliable way to verify accessibility. Try navigating your PDF without looking at the screen.

macOS — VoiceOver:

  1. Open the PDF in Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader.
  2. Press ⌘ + F5 to enable VoiceOver.
  3. Use VO + → (Control + Option + Right Arrow) to navigate through elements.
  4. Listen for: correct reading order, headings announced as headings, alt text read for images, table headers announced.
  5. Press ⌘ + F5 again to disable VoiceOver.

Windows — Narrator or NVDA:

  1. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader.
  2. Narrator: Press Win + Ctrl + Enter to toggle Narrator.
  3. NVDA (free, recommended): Download from nvaccess.org. Press Insert + ↓ to start reading.
  4. Navigate by headings (H key), tables (T key), and links (K key).

Typst Accessibility

Typst (v0.14+) produces tagged PDFs by default, making it one of the easiest paths to accessible PDF output from a markup language. Key features:

// Enable PDF/UA-1 conformance
#set document(title: "My Accessible Exam", date: auto)
// pdf-standard: "ua-1" can be set via CLI or export settings

#figure(
  image("diagram.png"),
  alt: "Flowchart showing three stages of compilation: parse, type-check, emit.",
  caption: [The compilation pipeline.],
)

Resources:

LaTeX Accessibility

LaTeX has historically produced untagged, inaccessible PDFs. The LaTeX Tagged PDF Project has made significant progress, but support is still evolving. As of TeX Live 2025 with LuaLaTeX:

% Minimal tagged PDF setup (requires LuaLaTeX + TeX Live 2025)
\DocumentMetadata{
  lang = en,
  pdfstandard = ua-2,
  pdfstandard = a-4,
  testphase = phase-III
}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\begin{document}
\section{Accessible Section}
The quadratic formula: \( x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a} \)
\end{document}

Be aware: The LaTeX tagging infrastructure is under active development. Package compatibility issues are common, and not all document types can produce fully accessible output yet. Always validate with veraPDF after compilation.

Resources:

Alternative: Export to HTML

Given the difficulty of making PDFs fully accessible, consider also providing an HTML version of your documents. HTML is natively accessible when authored with semantic markup and is far easier to make WCAG-compliant than PDF.

Pandoc can convert from LaTeX, Typst, Markdown, and many other formats to HTML with MathJax for math rendering:

# LaTeX to HTML with MathJax
pandoc input.tex -o output.html --mathjax --standalone

# Markdown to HTML
pandoc input.md -o output.html --mathjax --standalone

Typst can export directly to HTML (experimental as of v0.14):

typst compile input.typ output.html

Providing both a PDF and an HTML version of key course documents is a practical way to meet accessibility requirements while preserving the layout you need for exams and printed materials.

AI-Assisted PDF Remediation Tools

Several AI-powered tools can help with large-scale or complex PDF remediation. These are not required for this assignment, but may be worth exploring:

UC Berkeley Resources

Rubric (Do this for full credit)