PDF Accessibility Checker FAQ

Common questions about checking PDF accessibility compliance

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Quick Answer

What accessibility standards does this check against? The checker tests against WCAG 2.1 and PDF/UA (ISO 14289) standards, covering document structure, alt text, reading order, and form field labels.

Frequently Asked Questions

The tool checks against WCAG 2.1 AA/AAA requirements and PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1) for document accessibility including tagged content, reading order, alt text, and color contrast.

Missing alt text on images, untagged content, improper reading order, missing document language, low-contrast text, form fields without labels, and missing bookmarks in long documents.

The checker identifies issues with specific page locations and descriptions. For remediation, open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro or a PDF editor to fix the flagged issues.

Scanned PDFs (image-based) have limited accessibility by nature -- the tool will flag them as lacking text content. Use an OCR tool to add a text layer before checking accessibility.

Most PDFs complete checking in 5 to 30 seconds. Large documents (100+ pages) may take up to a minute depending on content complexity.

PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the Universal Accessibility standard for PDFs. It requires tagged content, logical reading order, alternative text for images, and other structured elements enabling screen reader access.

Troubleshooting

All images are flagged as lacking alt text
This is common for PDFs created from presentations without alt text metadata. Add alt text in the originating application (Word, PowerPoint) before exporting to PDF.
Reading order errors despite correct visual layout
Visual layout and reading order can differ in PDFs with complex multi-column layouts. Use Acrobat Pro Reading Order tool to manually set the correct sequence.
Tool cannot read the PDF
Encrypted or password-protected PDFs cannot be analyzed without the password. Use the Unlock PDF tool to remove protection first.