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The PAC 2021 tool was designed by the PDF/UA Foundation to ensure compliance of PDFs with the PDF/UA standard. A useful tool but one that has its limitations.

PDFs are used everywhere in our personal and professional lives. This format circulates on the web and is exchanged very easily.

But the majority of their content remains inaccessible to people with disabilities, visually impaired, blind, due to poor design.

What does it mean to make a PDF accessible?

To make a PDF accessible, it needs to be tagged. This includes structuring and identifying elements (headings, images, tables, text, graphics, etc.) so that assistive technologies for people with disabilities can access and present the data.

Tagging a PDF and making it accessible has several advantages:

  • comply with the decree on digital accessibility,
  • comply with recognized PDF/UA accessibility standards,
  • optimize the natural referencing of documents,
  • and structure the information for business needs.

What is the PDF/UA standard?

The PDF/UA standard, which stands for ‘Universal Accessibility,’ is a universal standard approved by ISO 14289 since 2012.

This standard has several advantages, namely:

  • Ensure access for everyone to the content of PDFs.
  • Offer a precise and universal technical framework.
  • Ensure compatibility with navigation tools and software.
  • Provide the best possible experience for users, whether they have a disability or not.
  • Apply WCAG accessibility principles in the PDF and complement them with technical criteria.
  • Facilitate display on mobile devices…

To assist in analyzing PDFs and verifying document compliance, the PDF UA Foundation has developed a free tool: the PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC).

The PAC – How does it work?

The PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC) is a tool designed to analyze the structure of PDF documents and validate markup points according to the ISO standard. Its first version dates back to 2010, and today we are on the 4th update. The PAC is currently available in 5 languages (Danish, English, French, German, Spanish).

Named Matterhorn, the protocol followed by PAC allows for the automatic verification of compliance with the 108 applicable criteria in the document, thus validating the PDF/UA and WCAG standards.

After loading the PDF file into the tool, it is analyzed.

The checkpoints are presented and identified as valid or not through a color-coded system.

Example of a non-compliant document

Example of a compliant document

Once this initial analysis is done, you can delve deeper into the results directly in the tool to make corrections if necessary. It is also possible to extract a report certifying the result.

An efficient tool that has its limitations

The PAC is a necessary tool for automating the verification of PDFs.

However, this tool also has its limitations. The most glaring one is that it can verify the presence of markup but cannot ensure the relevance of the tags used or the associated content.

The PAC says: Yes, there is indeed markup, but this does not automatically guarantee proper accessibility rendering.

For example, it is important to identify that it is a title, but if the title is not intelligible, the user will not have the complete information.

Furthermore, a certain number of components require human interpretation, which PAC 2021 cannot perform. This is the case for:

  • The heading levels
  • The reading order
  • The contrasts
  • The lists, tables, and charts
  • Lists in multiple columns
  • The bullets if poorly integrated
  • The page number

The ultimate goal is to provide content that is understandable for people with disabilities, so relying solely on the output of the PAC is not sufficient.

For quality tagging, it is essential to combine PAC automation with manual verification to date.

Thus, an operator can ensure the content of the tags and, most importantly, control the rendering.

AI at the service of disability

At a time when inclusion is at the forefront of our concerns, technological advances allow us to improve the performance of these tools. That’s why we have also been working for several years on our own Artificial Intelligence technology.

It allows for identifying, structuring, and rendering quality information contained in PDFs.

The goal is to ensure tagging and, consequently, accessibility of documents. Our tagging tool and PDF Accessible service rely on this technology, ensuring compliance with the PDF/UA standard while guaranteeing optimal content rendering for people with disabilities.

To ensure the quality of tagged documents, manual checks are still essential to this day. However, we are constantly improving the power of AI in the service of disability every week.

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