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Techniques for Accessible PDF: Headings

April 2025 by PDF Association staff

Headings are vital in organizing document content, especially with longer or complex documents. For assistive technology, the correct use of headings allows what would otherwise be an undifferentiated stream of text to become a navigable document in which readers can quickly find the content they want to read, and skip the content they don’t want to read.

Getting headings right is especially important with PDF documents, which can be very long, and may include deeply nested headings, multiple documents, document fragments, and more. Accessibility techniques for headings may therefore differ from techniques that are applicable to other technologies such as HTML.

On this basis the PDF Association is pleased to announce its second release of Techniques for Accessible PDF covering headings.

“Cheat Sheets” for PDF, for free!

August 2023 by Peter Wyatt
Article


The PDF Association’s PDF cheat sheets are designed to help developers work more efficiently. They are highly condensed summaries, with information grouped to help inform on nuances or details that … Read more

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August 2023 by Duff Johnson
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The PDF industry mourns the passing of the Adobe founder and visionary whose inventions and insights led to the creation … Read more

Article

August 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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PDF is a large, complex specification! Developers often look for first steps in its implementation. This article offers some suggestions.

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August 2023 by PDF Association staff
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LLMs and generative artificial intelligence, as much (or more) than everything else computers can do, is subject to the iron … Read more

PDF in the Wild

July 2023 by Duff Johnson
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Overcoming ossification requires everyone to agree on the strategy and specific technical changes affecting all stakeholders.

Article

July 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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PDF Association members now have a new resource: advance previews of targeted test cases highlighting differences between implementations, including in-depth … Read more

For members only

July 2023 by Matthew Hardy
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The PDF Association is proud to announce the release of “ISO/TS 32005 Document management – Portable Document Format – PDF … Read more

Article

July 2023 by Paul Rayius (Allyant)
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This update from the PDF/UA Processor LWG includes an example of its work mapping PDF’s structure types to web accessibility … Read more

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July 2023 by PDF Association staff
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The most recent specification of PDF doesn’t limit page size… at all. That’s up to the implementation.

PDF in the Wild

July 2023 by Thomas Zellmann
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Why PDF 2.0 is the definition of PDF every developer should use – even if your products don’t support PDF … Read more

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July 2023 by PDF Association staff
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As its members become more active in PDF Association communities we’ve taken new steps to ensure that easy access to … Read more

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