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