PDF Accessibility: A Necessity for an Inclusive Web
PDF accessibility ensures that all users can access content within a PDF from a digital platform. Let’s explore together the definition, regulations, and social implications.
What is Digital Accessibility and PDF Accessibility?
Definition of Accessibility
Making the web and its services available and accessible to everyone, regardless of their hardware, software, network infrastructure, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability
manager of W3C and inventor of the World Wide Web
To enable this universal web usage and facilitate interaction for individuals with disabilities, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has established standards known as WCAG 2.2 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Some countries and states strengthen these rules by incorporating them into their own legislation and imposing penalties and fines:
PDF accessibility aligns with this continuum through two dedicated standards: PDF/UA and ISO 14289-1.
How Many People Are Affected by Disabilities?
How to Make Your PDF Accessible?
The accessibility of a PDF involves technical, graphical, and editorial criteria. The goal is to verbally transcribe all elements contained in the PDF in a logical and intelligible manner.
Technical criteria:
Graphical criteria:
Editorial criteria:
What are the Challenges of PDF Accessibility?
A vast majority of documents circulating on the internet are in PDF format (reports, contracts, invoices, reports, publications, magazines, etc.). However, they are not necessarily natively interpretable by screen readers like NVDA or Jaws. Without proper treatment, the PDF format leads to inequalities in accessing information.
A social challenge
PDF accessibility means enabling everyone to interact with the content present in your documents. The people affected are diverse; it could be individuals who are blind or visually impaired, as well as those who absorb information better orally than in written form (non-native speakers, multitaskers, individuals with dyslexia, etc.).
A Legal challenge
In France, since the decree n°2019-768 of July 24, 2019, the legislature mandates eligible organizations to make their office documents, including PDFs, accessible.
This legal context aligns with the broader European framework of the European Accessibility Directive. More generally, legislation is strengthening globally to better protect citizens and prevent discriminatory situations in accessing content and services on the web.
A Technological Challenge
PDF software editors offer the addition of XML tags through their interfaces. This structuring process involves background information in PDF documents to make them accessible via screen readers or text-to-speech synthesis.
This design phase can be lengthy and tedious when done manually and by non-experts.
The challenge of automation is thus pivotal in democratizing access to PDF information. To address these challenges, DocAxess has developed its own Artificial Intelligence technology and offers various industrial-oriented products.
Our PDF accessibility solutions
DocAxess offers you two solutions that adapt to your needs, the size of your company, and the number of digital documents you need to remediate on a daily basis.
PDF Platform
Manage all your documents independently from our online platform. Experience unparalleled processing speed and efficiency, setting a new standard in the market.
AxessTag API
With our own Artificial Intelligence technology, integrable through API into your management tools, you can automatically and instantly process large volumes of documents.
Who Benefits from Accessible PDF ?
Use Cases
Insurance & banking documents
Payslips & contracts
Statements
Shareholder communications
Press releases
Magazines
FAQ
An accessible PDF is a Portable Document Format (PDF) that has been designed to enable individuals with physical or sensory limitations to access and understand its content. To be considered accessible, a PDF needs to be crafted in a way that allows individuals with visual, auditory, or physical limitations to navigate through the document, comprehend its content, and interact with it.
To make a PDF accessible, it needs to be annotated using a technique called ‘tagging’ or ‘XML coding.’ While this process remains unseen to regular users, it allows screen reader users to structure the document’s reading order. Additionally, providing alternatives for images and foreign languages is essential to ensure document accessibility.
There are several ways of checking the presence of accessibility tags in a PDF document. For example, by using the tools provided by Acrobat Pro, by running tests with screen readers such as Jaws or NVDA, or by using software such as PAC3 or VeraPDF to test your PDF’s compliance with accessibility standards.
