Accessible PDF
Representing the PDF industry via our Category A Liaison with ISO TC 171 SC 2, the PDF Association provides a vendor-neutral platform for PDF’s stakeholders to come together to achieve technical consensus on advancing the specifications and standards that define PDF technology. We are deeply committed to providing the necessary infrastructure, guidance, techniques, and other resources to help developers, regulators, authors and users get on the same page about how to ensure rich, reliable, accessible PDF documents.
Of our current 19 Technical and Liaison Working Groups 5 are directly concerned with advancing the accessibility-related features of PDF technology via publication of various types of guidance, including the Tagged PDF Best Practice Guide, the Matterhorn Protocol, Well-Tagged PDF (WTPDF) (later published by ISO as PDF/UA-2 (ISO 14289-2), and most recently, the beta release of the PDF Accessibility LWG’s Techniques for Accessible PDF.
This page gathers content regarding PDF accessibility from across pdfa.org.
- ISO standards for accessible PDF
- Industry specifications on accessibility
- Other PDF industry publications related to accessibility
- Member working groups related to accessibility
- Articles on accessibility
- PDF Days presentations on accessibility
- Members' news on accessibility
- Members' products & services supporting PDF/UA
ISO standards for accessible PDF
The PDF Association is ISO's and ANSI's committee manager for ISO TC 171 SC 2, publisher of all ISO standards for PDF technology with the exception of ISO 15930 (PDF/X) and ISO 16612 (PDF/VT), which are developed under the auspices of ISO TC 130.
ISO 14289-2:2024 (PDF/UA-2) defines the use of tagged PDF in files conforming to ISO 32000-2:2020 … Read more
ISO/TS 32005 extends ISO 32000-2 to clarify inclusion rules for using tags defined in the … Read more
ISO 14289-1:2014 (PDF/UA-1) defines the use of tagged PDF in files conforming to ISO 32000-1:2008 … Read more
Industry specifications on accessibility
These formal industry publications define the interoperable use of PDF technology for accessibility purposes. All are freely available. Some are also published as ISO standards.
Other PDF industry publications related to accessibility
In keeping with the spirit of the original PDF Reference, all PDF Association publications are freely available.
This document provides guidance and recommendations for application developers who want to create PDF files … Read more
Commercial and free PDF creation, viewing or validation software that exposes the relationship between a … Read more
These Techniques provide atomic example files and test procedures in a vendor-neutral manner, allowing PDF … Read more
An informative representation of the allowable containment of structure element types as defined in ISO/TS … Read more
Explanations of technical terms related to accessibility as used in the PDF and PDF/UA standards.
The Matterhorn Protocol, a free publication, identifies all possible ways to fail PDF/UA-1.
The PDF/UA Reference Suite is a resource for software developers and practitioners interested in best-practices … Read more
The Tagged PDF Best Practice Guide includes guidance for all structure element types and attributes, … Read more
Member working groups related to accessibility
The PDF Association's volunteer working groups represent the organization's true purpose and most important feature. Their primary purpose is to develop and obtain consensus on PDF specifications, test-suites, technical and application notes, best practices and other formal industry guidance. Many of these products are eventually submitted for ISO standardization via ISO TC 171 SC 2.
Accessibility is the direct or indirect focus of the following working groups:
Accessible PDF, including oversight of ISO 14289.
Formalizing common understandings on processing tagged PDF.
Developing techniques and examples for accessible PDF.
Exploring pathways to expressing PDF content in HTML.
Articles on accessibility
PDF Association members can post non-commercial educational content on pdfa.org.
January 2026 by Superace Software Technologies Co., Ltd.
UPDF for iOS, developed by Superace, is now live on Product Hunt, offering full-featured PDF editing, AI-assisted document workflows, and … Read more
December 2025 by Dual Lab sprl
Dual Lab is glad to announce a new PDF Accessibility Checker available immediately for tests and download.
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PDF Days presentations on accessibility
These educational presentations were presented at PDF Days events by a wide range of industry experts.
This keynote highlights the regulatory landscape in Germany and the EU, with a focus on the real-world requirements for making digital documents accessible.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming the field of digital accessibility—but what does this mean for one of the most stubborn formats: PDF? This session offers a compelling introduction to the … Read more
The PDF Association’s Techniques for accessible PDF are developed by the PDF Accessibility LWG. The first release occurred in January 2025, and the collection grows each quarter as LWG members … Read more
We analyse large volume of real world PDF coming from two public sources: Digital Corpora (8M PDFs) randomly crawled PDFs on the Web with recent creation dates These collections are … Read more
At PDF Days Europe 2022 we outlined the goals of our multi-year project for transforming LaTeX to automatically generate accessible and reusable PDF with no or only minimal configuration adjustments … Read more
AI has been pivotal in creating tools to automate the generation of accessible and reusable PDF content, evolving from early object detection and pixel-based models to advanced techniques that enable … Read more
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Members' news on accessibility
PDF Association members have lots to say! pdfa.org provides a means for our members to promote their company, products and services. The PDF Association is not responsible for members' representation of their products or services.
February 2025 by Crawford Technologies Inc.
Crawford Technologies announced the availability of AccessibilityNow® SmartSetup, a solution that leverages the company’s AI-powered functionality, called AutoSense, to automatically … Read more
Members' products & services supporting PDF/UA
PDF Association members are entitled to post their products and services in the product showcase. And, if applicable, in the PDF Association's list of Tools for Accessible PDF. The members' posting the products listed below are claiming that the product supports PDF/UA-1. The PDF Association is not responsible for members' representation of their products or services.
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