ISO 14289-1

Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility – Part 1: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/UA-1)

PDF files may be created natively, converted from other electronic formats, or digitized from paper. Businesses, governments, libraries, archives, and other institutions and individuals around the world use PDF to represent considerable bodies of important information. These PDF files should be accessible to users with disabilities.

Beyond alternative descriptions for images the accessibility of an electronic document depends on a variety of semantic information describing the logical structure and organization of the page content into sections, paragraphs, lists, tables and so on.

The PDF feature that represents the semantic information necessary for accessibility is known as “Tagged PDF”.

The ISO 14289 (PDF/UA) family of standards consists of:

• ISO 14289-2:2024: This standard is published.
• ISO 14289-1:2014: This “dated revision” includes a variety of corrections. It is available from both ISO and the PDF Association.
• ISO 14289-1:2012: The original PDF/UA specification published in 2012 is no longer available.

Context and limitations

PDF/UA operates as a companion standard to be used in conjunction with ISO 32000-2 (PDF 2.0). A common source of accessibility requirements are the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). PDF/UA provides a means of making PDF files that conform to WCAG, and may be used in conjunction with WCAG 2.x.

By itself, conformity to PDF/UA does not necessarily ensure the accessibility of a document’s content.  Cases not covered by PDF/UA include, and are not limited to:

• Authors may have used colour or contrast in an inaccessible manner
• ECMAScript present in the file may generate inaccessible results
• Text content may not be accessible to those with certain cognitive impairments.

PDF/UA does not cover conversion, or how to achieve conformance; the standard simply states the technical features of accessible PDF documents.

The PDF Association maintains extensive technical resources, including a best practice guide and other educational materials to guide developers and users of PDF/UA.

This document is available at no cost
exclusively from the PDF Association

As part of the PDF Association’s exclusive PDF/UA bundle, this ISO Standard is made available from the PDF Association at no cost thanks to generous sponsorship support provided by Allyant, Axes4, CDP Communications and Targetstream Technologies.

Read the announcement, or learn more about sponsored standards from the PDF Association.

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PDF/UA