Announcing no-cost access to PDF’s accessibility standards

AUGUST 12, 2024: The PDF Association and leading PDF accessibility companies Allyant, Axes4, CDP Communications and TargetStream Technologies, are today making the ISO standards for accessibility in PDF technology - ISO 14289-1 (PDF/UA-1), ISO 14289-2 (PDF/UA-2) and ISO TS 32005 - available at no cost.

Although users worldwide benefit from PDF’s accessibility features, adoption of accessibility standards for PDF technology has lagged because a significant portion of the ecosystem can’t or won’t pay for expensive ISO publications. Without a no-cost specification it’s very hard to reach all these developers, remediators and other users.

Starting today, all PDF users can begin to leverage ISO-standardized accessibility requirements for content in the PDF file format:

• End users who need assistive technology in order to navigate and read digital documents can use these standards to foster improved products and services.
• Organizations can use these standards to set goals for the documents they create, ingest or manage.
• Document remediators can use these standards in performing professional services related to ensuring PDF files are accessible.
• Software developers can these standards as guidance in developing software to create and process tagged PDF.

Thanks to these leading PDF accessibility companies

“Today, the PDF Association is delighted to announce no-cost access to the ISO standards that define the gold standard for accessible PDF files” said Duff Johnson, PDF Association CEO. “We are grateful to the PDF Association’s member sponsors; Allyant, Axes4, CDP Communications and TargetStream Technologies, who have stepped up to make this possible,” Johnson said.

The documents covered by this announcement include:

• ISO 14289-1:2014 Better known as “PDF/UA-1" (UA stands for “universal accessibility”), this document provides critical accessibility requirements for PDF documents conforming to PDF 1.7.
• ISO 14289-2:2024 The "next-generation" accessibility standard for PDF, PDF/UA-2 provides accessibility requirements specific to PDF 2.0, and thus opens the door to a wide variety of accessibility enhancements enabled with PDF 2.0.
• ISO TS 32005 This Technical Specification is published by ISO to provide rules for integrating structure elements defined in PDF 1.7 with those defined in PDF 2.0.

Download the PDF/UA bundle today!

Learn more about the PDF Association's sponsored standards program.