Is Adobe Express accessible?

Adobe Express helps you design professional content like social media content, flyers, and PDFs. Additional steps need to be taken during the design phase to ensure that these resources are accessible and meet WCAG 2.1 AA requirements. 

Adobe Express Accessibility Best Practices 

For images and documents

  • Make your text easy to read. Avoid decorative fonts, left-align your text, and use a minimum of 14pt (or larger) font size. Consider using Berkeley Brand fonts. 
  • Check your color. Make sure your text color and background color meet color contrast requirements and don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning. Berkeley Brand lists approved color combinations that meet accessibility standards.
  • Keep layouts simple. Group related content together and leave enough white space. 
  • Avoid moving or flashing animations. Unneeded movement can make it more difficult for folks to read, understand, and use your resources. 
  • Ensure any text in images is also provided as machine-readable text for users of assistive tech.

For webpages

At this time do not use Adobe Express to create web pages on the Berkeley subdomain (department.berkeley.edu). Currently, there are WCAG failures which can not be corrected for by editors.  Berkeley IT is working with Adobe to address these issues in a timely manner.

For video content 

  • Add captions to your videos. Adobe Express can generate open (burned-in) captions to your videos. Double check that your auto-generated captions are accurate and complete. Add speaker identification if needed. Learn more about caption requirements. 
  • Make sure your captions meet color contrast requirements. We recommend using white text on a black background, when available. Learn more about color and color contrast. 

Exporting your files 

Image files

For social media, or to add to your website. 

  1. Select Download. 
  2. In the File format dropdown menu, select PNG or JPG. 
  3. Select Download. 
  4. Upload your image to your website or social media post. 
  5. Add your Alt Text. 

Learn more about writing alt text or writing accessible social media content. 

PDFs

  1. Select Download. 
  2. In the File format dropdown menu, select PDF Standard (Best for documents). 
  3. Toggle the Add accessibility tags checkbox.  
  4. Select Download. Your file will download as a tagged PDF. However, due to a known issue with heading levels, the levels are likely to be incorrect, so be prepared to review and remediate the PDF tags.

Important!: Automatic tags are great, but they aren't perfect. Double check your tag structure in Adobe Acrobat. Learn more about making PDFs accessible. 

More Resources