Across the last six memo revisions, diagnose the pattern of changes that consumed committee time without changing econ…
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.
| Standard | Focus | Application |
|---|---|---|
| PDF/UA | Rules specifically for PDF documents | Ensures technical accessibility features within the PDF itself. |
| WCAG | General web content accessibility guidelines | Applies to all digital content, including PDFs, but is not PDF-specific. |
Fixing the original document (like a Word file) is much better because it saves time. If the source is accessible, any PDF you create from it will also be accessible. This means you do not have to spend a lot of time fixing the PDF later, which can be difficult and slow, especially for untagged documents.
Yes, the Accessibility Auto-Tag API can tag both native PDFs and scanned PDFs. It uses smart technology to identify headings, tables, lists, and paragraphs, even in scanned documents. This helps to give structure to documents that started as images.
Tagging adds a hidden structure to a PDF document. These tags tell screen readers and other assistive technologies what each part of the document is (like a heading, paragraph, or image). Tagging is the most important step for PDF accessibility because without it, screen readers cannot understand the content or read it in the correct order.