Over the last year, accessibility tickets get logged but rarely routed fast enough. Recommend one tidy automation for …
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 |
|---|---|
| PDF/UA | A standard specifically for PDF documents, ensuring they are accessible. |
| WCAG | A general set of guidelines for web content accessibility, which applies to PDFs but is not PDF-specific. |
Fixing accessibility in the original document, like a Word file, saves a lot of time. When you export an accessible source file to PDF, it keeps most of its accessibility features. Remediating (fixing) an already created, untagged PDF is a very time-consuming process.
The Reading Order tool in Acrobat lets you manually adjust the order in which content is read by screen readers. This is crucial because if the reading order is wrong, a screen reader might jump around the page, making the document confusing for users with visual impairments.
Yes, Acrobat's PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API can tag both native and scanned PDFs. This helps structure the document, even if it started as an image. This makes it a good first step for making scanned documents more accessible.