Markus Erle
Chair of these communities: PDF Accessibility LWGMarkus Erle is a member of the PDF Association Board of Directors.
Markus Erle is Co-Founder and CEO of axes4, a German-Swiss deep-tech company specialising in PDF accessibility.
As communications scholar, philosopher, and serial entrepreneur, he has been a thought leader in digital accessibility for more than 20 years. Having started out in web accessibility, he recognised early on that digital inclusion must extend beyond websites to encompass documents. In 2010, he initiated the PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC), the first freely available tool for checking PDF accessibility.
In 2015, he co-founded axes4 with Samuel Hofer. Today, he serves as CEO of this German-Swiss deep-tech company specialising in PDF accessibility. His vision: a digital world in which every document is accessible to everyone.
Markus Erle chairs an international PDF Association working group on Techniques for Accessible PDF and serves on the Association’s Board of Directors. He is also Co-Founder and Advisory Board Member of IAAP D-A-CH, the professional association for digital accessibility professionals in German-speaking countries, and Co-Founder of the Swiss Digital Inclusion Alliance (ADIS). As the driving force behind axes4 Day and the PDF Accessibility Summit, he brings together technology, standards, and people to make digital inclusion scalable.
