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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.

We asked ChatGPT about its support for PDF…

November 2023 by PDF Association staff
PDF in the Wild


We wanted to know how well ChatGPT processes PDF files. So we signed up for ChatGPT 4.0, the paid version, and asked…

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October 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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Although PDF is commonly understood as a single holistic file format, in reality, PDF comprises a number of distinct dialects, … Read more

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October 2023 by PDF Association staff
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5 years ago the PDF Accessibility LWG began a project to develop a set of accessibility techniques for PDF files. … Read more

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October 2023 by National Archives and Records Administration

New federal regulations set digitization standards for permanent records and require agencies to manage their permanent records in digital format.

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October 2023 by PDF Association staff
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PDF Week Fall 2023 in San Francisco covered subjects ranging from HDR to compression, color fonts, animation, accessibility and (much!) … Read more

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October 2023 by PDF Association staff
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The PDF Association is perhaps DARPA’s smallest-ever prime contractor. For DARPA’s SafeDocs program, however, it’s also the biggest success story.

PDF in the Wild

September 2023 by Thomas Zellmann
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To encourage marketing staff to sign up for the PDF Technology Marketing Working Group we decided to record a recent … Read more

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September 2023 by PDF Association staff
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PDF Week in San Francisco this October is hosting a free industry Symposium on Advancing the PDF Imaging Model! There’s … Read more

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September 2023 by Apryse
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Read Riley Kooh’s vision for the future of PDF technology over the next 25 years.

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September 2023 by Peter Wyatt
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PDF developers everywhere have a new resource; targeted test cases highlighting differences between implementations.

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September 2023 by PDF Association staff
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Funky (but legit!) PDF, sneaky malware PDF, poisoned PDF, PDF for LEGO, NASA does PDF… it’s a wild PDF world … Read more

PDF in the Wild

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