Accessible Flyers with Canva

Flyer designers can use mindful design and export options to create accessible flyers with Canva. Canva has been making big strides for accessibility recently, including the ability to mark text as headings, easily add alt-text, and an accessibility checker.

• Accessibility at Canva
• Use Canva Design Accessibility
• Canva Keyboard Shortcuts
• Video: Fix Reading Order Before You Download – grouping and layers

However, the PDF exports frequently still require some remediation although it is much less than it used to be, so always check the final PDF flyer before distributing the digital file. Remember to export your PDF without “flattening” the file. This removes all accessibility supports, and remediation would need to start from scratch.

Jump to: Check Tags | Tables | Remediate Links | Use Checker

Correct Reading Order

1. Open the PDF with Adobe Acrobat.
2. On the toolbar on the right side of the Acrobat screen, select the Order button if available (looks similar to a capital Z). If not available, right-click/alt-click that toolbar and select Order.
3. The Reading Order pane will appear on the right side of the screen. Elements that are out of order can be drag-and-dropped in the right location.

If text disappears behind a shape marked as decorative, this can be fixed by going into the Content pane from the right side toolbar. Find the graphic (likely titled something similar to “Form XObject (#) Path” and move it into the Container with H1 (or whatever the element is being blocked).

Jump to: Correct Reading Order | Tables | Remediate Links | Use Checker

Check Tags

1. Open the PDF file with Adobe Acrobat.
2. If the Accessibility Tags pane isn’t open, add it to the right toolbar by right-clicking/alt-clicking and selecting Accessibility tags from the context menu. If the pane doesn’t open automatically, select the new button to open the pane.
3. Review elements one-by-one to ensure accuracy. Tab Type can be changed by either double-clicking and typing in the correct tag between angle brackets (e.g. <H1>) if you know the correct syntax for the tag, or by right-clicking/alt-clicking, selecting Properties, then changing the tag type from the drop-down menu.
   1. The title should be in an “H1” tag.
   2. Subheadings are “H2”.
   3. Body text is in paragraph tags “¶”.
   4. Information images are in “Figure” tags, frequently with the beginning of the alt-text visible.
   5. Lists are contained in an “L” tag. Expand this tag (by selecting the right-arrow-head to the left of the tag) to check each list element.
   6. Tables are in a “Table” tag. Tables must be expanded to check that headers are marked correctly. See below section “Remediate table formatting.”
   7. Links are in a “Link” tag. Links must contain an item with the text as well as an OBJR item.

Jump to: Correct Reading Order | Check Tags | Remediate Links | Use Checker

Remediate table formatting

Tables frequently contain “header” cells, which title a row or column. For example, the table cell at the top of a column is said to have that column as its “scope.” This means header cells in the first row of a table have columns as their scope. Header cells in the first column of a table have rows as their scope.

All header cells must have their designation and scope checked in Acrobat.

Tags within Tables include:

• TR : table row
• TH : header cell
• TD : data cell

1. Right-click/alt-click the Table tag, select Table Editor from the context menu. This should highlight the table with a red border, red header cells, and grey data cells.
2. Right-click/alt-click a cell in the table, select Table Cell Properties.
3. Change the cell type to Header cell with the radio buttons if needed.
4. In the Scope drop down menu, select if the header cell applies to a row or a column.
5. For simple tables with no merged cells, the spans in the bottom portion of the Cell Properties pop-up will be 1. For complex tables with merged cells, this will probably be more than 1 for those cells.
6. Select the OK button.
7. Once table check is complete, click anywhere outside of the table to exit Table Editor mode.

Jump to: Correct Reading Order | Check Tags | Tables | Use Checker

Remediate Links

Links do not export properly with link tags in the PDFs (as of March 2026), even if links were added in Canva so that the text is clickable and directs to the correct destination.

When examining links in the Accessibility Tags pane, a common issue is that the link is held in an empty text tag. The following technique should work for most trouble with links.

1. In the Tags pane, delete the empty tag associated with the link.
2. Add a new link tag using either method:
   1. Right-click/alt-click on the tag above where you need the link to go, then select New Tag from the context menu, OR
   2. Select the Tags menu using the three horizontal dots button in the upper right corner of the Tags pane, then select New Tag. Drag-and-drop the new tag to the appropriate location if necessary.
3. Either type or select Link as the tag type and select OK.
4. Select the link text (e.g. “https://bit.ly/IAG-MSUDenver”). Ensure you are highlighting the text with the text editor cursor tool and not drawing a rectangle around the area.
5. In the Tags pane, select one of the new empty <Link> tags you created. Select the three dots in the upper right corner of the Tags pane, then select Create Tag From Selection. This should add a text element inside the Link Tag.
6. Re-highlight the link text. Right-click/alt-click the link text, then select Create Link from the context menu.
   1. If it is already recognized as a link, Delete Link, then select Create Link.
7. In the Create Link pop-up, the Link Type can be left as invisible rectangle and Highlight Style as invert unless you wish to change these. In the Link Action section, select the radio button for Open a web page. Select Next.
8. Type the URL into the text box, then select OK.
9. Ideally, the URL should now be outlined in a blue rectangle but no longer highlighted. If no blue rectangle appears, try to Create Link again.
10. Repeat steps 1 through 9 for all links.
11. Link tags should (ideally) now contain the text element and a Link-OBJR element. If no Link-OBJR element appears anywhere in any tags, follow the steps for adding the OBJR elements.

Add OBJR elements:

1. Once all links have been created and added inside Link tags, select the three dots in the upper corner of the Tags pane, select Find.
2. In the pop-up Find Element box, select “Unmarked Links” in the Find dropdown menu.
   1. Select search Page (or Document for multiple pages).
   2. Select Find. Acrobat should highlight unmarked links with a purple outline box. Select the Tag Element button.
   3. Select Find Next. Continue tagging until there are no more links.
3. “Link-OBJR” elements should have appeared in the tags pane. Drag-and-drop any that are in the incorrect link tag to the correct place.

Jump to: Correct Reading Order | Check Tags | Tables | Remediate Links

Use the Adobe Accessibility Checker

1. On the top toolbar, select All tools to open the pane.
2. Select Prepare for accessibility.
3. Select Check for accessibility.
4. Perform necessary manual reviews and correct any errors.

Common Errors:

• Untagged figure that was marked as decorative in Canva and remains decorative.
  1. 1. In the Content pane, locate the image.
     2. Right-click/alt-click the image, then select Create artifact.
     3. In the pop-up box, keep type as Page, select OK.