When people talk about accessibility, they often focus on websites. But what about PDFs? They’re everywhere—forms, reports, applications, public records—and they’re often inaccessible by default.
Enter PDF/UA: the official standard for making PDF documents accessible. If your agency publishes documents, understanding PDF/UA is essential for Section 508 compliance—and for actually serving your community.
What Is PDF/UA?
PDF/UA stands for PDF Universal Accessibility. It’s an ISO standard (ISO 14289-1) that defines how PDF documents should be structured and tagged to be readable by assistive technologies.
While WCAG focuses on web content, PDF/UA applies specifically to PDFs. It ensures that a document is:
- Properly tagged
- Logically ordered
- Screen-reader compatible
- Keyboard accessible
Without PDF/UA compliance, even a beautiful, text-filled PDF can be a digital dead end for users with disabilities.
Common Failures in Government PDFs
Most public PDFs fail PDF/UA—often badly. Here’s what we see most often:
- No tags at all
- Autotagged content with meaningless
<P>walls - Jumbled tags created by source software like Word, PowerPoint and InDesign
- Missing headings or incorrect heading levels
- Poor reading order
- Alt text missing or redundant
- Tables that don’t announce rows/columns
- Form fields without labels
These issues make documents unusable with screen readers like JAWS or NVDA, and may violate Section 508 and ADA requirements.
Why PDF/UA Matters for Section 508 and ADA
Section 508 (federal government) and ADA Title II (state and local governments) require documents to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. But WCAG wasn’t written for PDFs—it’s a web standard. PDF/UA bridges the gap, offering a clear checklist for document compliance.
In fact, many accessibility pros recommend that PDFs meet both WCAG and PDF/UA to ensure full usability and defensibility.
How to Check if a PDF Is Accessible
Open the file in Adobe Acrobat Pro and:
- Open the Tags pane. If it’s empty—big problem.
- If it’s got tags, but they’re not correct—also a big problem.
- Run the Accessibility Checker (but don’t rely on it exclusively!).
- Use the Reading Order Tool to see if content flows logically.
- Try reading it with a screen reader.
If any of those steps fail, the document is not compliant.
Fixing the Problem
PDFs with selectable text can be remediated in Acrobat. Scanned documents will need to be converted to text first. Acrobat can do this for you, but make sure to proofread the document, especially if the scans are blurry or smudged.
The best approach:
- Audit a sample set of documents
- Remediate the highest priority files
- Establish accessible templates for all new documents going forward
Final Thoughts
PDF/UA may not be as well-known as WCAG, but it’s just as important. If your agency serves the public through documents, then document accessibility is public service.
Want to find out if your PDFs are compliant?
