Review the last ten steering reports and show the pattern in what stakeholders actually used versus what we produced. …
Open the PDF document you want to check for accessibility.
Click the Tools tab at the top of the Acrobat window.
Scroll through the list and select Accessibility to add the Accessibility tools to your workspace if they are not already visible.
Best practiceIf you do not see the Accessibility tools, you may need to add them from the Tools pane as they are not shown by default.
In the Accessibility tools pane, click Full Check.
In the Accessibility Checker Options dialog, review the settings and click Start Checking.
Best practiceFor a thorough check, ensure all checkboxes are selected before starting the check.
Review the results displayed in the Accessibility Checker panel on the left side of the screen.
You can right-click in the Navigation Pane to show the Accessibility tags panel for more detailed tag inspection.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
PDF accessibility means your PDF reports can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities who use screen readers. It matters because it ensures your information reaches a wider audience and meets legal requirements like WCAG and Section 508. An accessible PDF has a clear structure, proper reading order, and descriptions for images, making it easy to navigate and understand.
Yes, the Accessibility Checker can help, but a blurry scanned PDF will be harder to make fully accessible. The 'Automatically tag PDF' feature, especially with Sensei-powered cloud tagging, can work with scanned documents to identify text and structure. However, if the text is too blurry, it might not be recognized correctly. It's best to first improve the scan quality if possible. After auto-tagging, you will need to manually check and fix many more items like reading order and alt text due to the blurriness.
| Feature | PDF/UA | WCAG |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Specific to PDF documents | General guidelines for all web content |
| Regulation | A PDF-specific standard for accessible PDFs | Technology-agnostic standard, often legally required |
| Goal | Ensures technical accessibility of the PDF structure | Ensures content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust |
Fixing accessibility in the source document, such as a Word file, is always better because it saves a lot of time and effort. When you create an accessible Word document, the accessibility features (like headings, alt text, and lists) are often kept when you export it to PDF. This means you have less work to do in Acrobat later. Remediating an untagged PDF after it's created can be very time-consuming and complex, especially for large documents.