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Ohio State thesis accessibility requirement: what it checks and how to pass

Not affiliated with or endorsed by The Ohio State University. This guide quotes the school's public pages; if anything here differs from them, the school's pages win.

In short: Five accessibility features expected since 2023. Per the Graduate School's plan, no student is currently held back from graduating over accessibility.

The rule, in the school's words

As of Spring, 2023, all theses and dissertations will need to incorporate the following accessibility features to align with the university’s accessibility policy. When you submit your final document to OhioLINK you will be verifying that accessibility features have been applied.

While the Graduate School is committed to the enhancement of accessibility measures applied by student authors on theses and dissertations, presently no student will be withheld from graduating based on the level of applied accessibility.

What it checks

The five features, as the Graduate School lists them:

• PDF file includes full text
• PDF accessibility permission flag is checked
• Text language of the PDF is specified
• PDF includes a title
• Images, figures, and tables have descriptive captions and/or alt tags explaining content

In Acrobat's Accessibility Check, the guide ticks these options: Accessibility permission flag is set, Document is not image-only PDF, Text language is specified, Document title is showing in title bar, and Figures require alternative text.

Deadlines we know

• Autumn 2026: approved thesis and dissertation submitted and accepted by December 4, 2026. (source, checked 2026-10-29)
• Spring 2027: approved thesis and dissertation submitted and accepted by April 23, 2027. (source, checked 2026-10-29)

Dates change; confirm them with your graduate school.

How to pass it for free

Help Ohio State offers

• No Acrobat? The guide lists the Digital Union (Macs only), the Research Commons Computer Lab, and the Thompson Main Library and 18th Avenue Library computers. Students can also download Adobe software through Ohio State IT (it.osu.edu/adobe).
• The guide recommends attaching the Acrobat accessibility report to your submission to speed up format review.

Worth knowing

Our honest take: this is the lightest rule on our list. Most students can meet these five checks with the free steps below and one run of Acrobat's checker. You probably don't need to pay anyone unless your thesis is in LaTeX or has many figures.

Do it yourself

In Word

1. Start from your school's Word template if it has one.
2. Make every heading with Word's built-in styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3), not with bold or bigger text. Use Word's own list buttons and Insert, Table of Contents.
3. Make tables with Insert, Table. Give each a header row: select the first row, then Table Properties, Row, “Repeat as header row at the top of each page”. Don't use tabs or spaces to line things up, and don't paste tables as pictures.
4. Add alt text to every figure: right-click it, then View Alt Text (or Edit Alt Text). Describe what the figure shows and why it matters. Mark purely decorative images as decorative.
5. Set the document title (File, Info, Properties, Title) and the language (Review, Language).
6. Run Review, Check Accessibility and fix what it lists.
7. Save as PDF, not Print to PDF, because printing drops the tags. On Windows: File, Save As, PDF, Options, and keep “Document structure tags for accessibility” ticked. On a Mac: File, Save As, PDF, and choose “Best for electronic distribution and accessibility”.

In LaTeX

1. Use a recent TeX Live (2025 or later; we used 2026) and compile with LuaLaTeX.
2. Put this before \documentclass. It is what we used on the LaTeX example below:

   \DocumentMetadata{
     lang=en-US,
     pdfversion=1.7,
     pdfstandard=ua-1,
     tagging=on,
     testphase={phase-III,math,title,table,firstaid}
   }

3. Give the PDF a title: \hypersetup{pdftitle={Your title}, pdfdisplaydoctitle=true}.
4. Add alt text to each figure: \includegraphics[alt={What the figure shows}]{file}.
5. Mark table header rows, for example \tagpdfsetup{table/header-rows={1}} before a table whose first row is its header.
6. Check that your packages work with tagging on the LaTeX Project's tagging status page. Some (TikZ wrappers, custom floats) need workarounds.

Check the result

• Adobe Acrobat Pro: Accessibility, Accessibility Check. Many schools check with this, and campus labs often have it.
• PAC (PDF Accessibility Checker): free, Windows only. NDSU treats it as authoritative.
• veraPDF: free and open source on every platform. It checks PDF/UA.
• Word's Check Accessibility only checks the .docx. Always check the final PDF too.

Or we fix it for you

If you'd rather not do it yourself, we fix the structure of your thesis without changing a word you wrote, and send a validator report with every order.

If Ohio State's checker rejects your thesis for an item we fixed, we refund you in full. Our checks are veraPDF (PDF/UA) plus our own implementation of Acrobat's published rules, not Acrobat itself. We report what checkers say; that isn't legal advice. Guarantee details.

Some schools have rules on third-party help or AI use. Check with your advisor or graduate school first.

Checkout isn't open yet, so you pay nothing now. The first 3 requests get the fix free, in exchange for honest feedback. We won't ask for a testimonial.

Request a fix for a Ohio State thesis

Sources

Checked 2026-10-29:

• Format Review and Submission (Ohio State Graduate School)
• Graduate School Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Accessibility Plan (Ohio State)
• Digital Accessibility Guide for Dissertations and Theses (Ohio State)
• Graduation calendar (Ohio State Graduate School)