Case Study: How the Federal Reserve Automates PDF Accessibility with PDFix

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States, publishes thousands of PDF documents monthly — from monetary policy reports to regulatory filings and research papers. Many of these files exceed 2,000 pages and originate from scanned sources, resulting in image-based PDFs that lack semantic tagging and accessible structure.

The Challenge

Under Section 508 and PDF/UA requirements, the Federal Reserve must ensure all digital content is accessible to individuals with disabilities. Additionally, compliance with Executive Order 14028 and OMB security mandates (M-22-18, M-23-16) requires that all third-party tools used in document workflows meet secure software development standards. Ensuring that thousands of large, untagged PDFs are both accessible and securely processed required a robust, automated solution.

The PDFix Solution

To meet these demands, the Federal Reserve integrated the PDFix SDK into its internal document processing system. Key features included:

• OCR for scanned documents: converting images to searchable, readable text
• Auto-tagging: intelligently recognizing and tagging document structure for accessibility
• High-speed batch processing: large-scale remediation at tens of pages per second, per core
• Secure integration: meeting all federal software development and security requirements

Outcomes

• Improved Efficiency: Automated processing significantly reduced manual remediation time and cost
• Standards Compliance: All output documents consistently meet Section 508, PDF/UA, and WCAG requirements
• Secure Integration: PDFix SDK aligns with federal secure software requirements
• Enhanced Accessibility: Greater access to public information for individuals with disabilities, reinforcing the Board’s commitment to inclusivity

Learn more at Case Study: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System