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College of Health and Human Sciences
Accessibility by Design

PDF Accessibility Checkers

Overview

The Acrobat Accessibility Checker is a helpful tool for resolving many issues with PDFs, and is what the average user should use for a universal design level of accessibility. However, Acrobat’s built-in checker does not check against WCAG standards required for full accessibility.

Anyone responsible for fully accessible PDFs should use the free PAC 2024 accessibility checker. Use the detailed WCAG report (not PDF/UA) to identify issues. You’ll still need to use Acrobat to fix the issues, but the report will help you pinpoint where they are in the document.

How-Tos

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Checker (Universal Design Only)

On the Accessibility Toolbar, select Accessibility Check.

Accessibility Check in the toolbar

Click Start Checking on the options window.

Start Checking button in the Accessibility Checker Options window

The summary will be displayed in the pane on the left side of the document. Expand the items for details.

Accessibility Checker summary with 4 document issues and 1 headings issue

Right-click on an item in the report. If Fix is an option, you can choose it and you will be prompted with a quick method of fixing the item.

Context menu on an item in the report with Fix option available

Other items need to be fixed manually within the document. Click on the item to be taken to the point in the document where the issue takes place.

PAC 2024 (Full Accessibility)

Download PAC 2024 for a free PDF accessibility checker.

PAC 2024 scans PDFs for compliance with WCAG 2.1 standards. You still need Acrobat Professional to be able to fix any issues found.

This is for more advanced users who are responsible for full accessibility.

  • Download PAC 2024 from the PDF/UA Foundation. Unfortunately, this is currently a Windows-only program.
  • Extract the contents from the downloaded zip file, then run the PAC.exe program from the extracted folder. No installation is necessary.
  • The screenshots in this tutorial show an older version of PAC, but very little has changed in the user’s experience.
  • Use the button with the arrow icon to browse for a PDF file, or drag the file onto the window.
PDF Accessibility Checker with open button
  • Click on the WCAG tab to view an overview of the results.
PAC WCAG report tab
  • Click on Results in Detail for a breakdown of all the issues.
PAC Results in Detail button on the WCAG tab
  • The detailed results show the PDF/UA results by default. Expand the WCAG report instead and drill down until you reach the specific item descriptions. You’ll see a snapshot of the location in the document where the issue takes place. This helps you to know where to fix the item.
  • In the case of the example in the following screenshot, simply setting the document language will resolve 2027 “Natural language of text object cannot be determined” errors.
Details page showing multiple language errors

Video introduction to the PAC Checker:

Common Errors found in PAC 2024

There are some PAC errors that occur frequently, especially in converted PDFs. Even when the original file is accessible, not everything translates perfectly into the PDF.

Not all possible PAC errors are addressed here. However, The Accessibility Guy has very detailed videos with step-by-step instructions for resolving specific errors. Below are videos for two PAC errors that frequently occur after conversion to PDF.

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