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Accessibility by Design

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.

However, Acrobat does not check against WCAG standards. Use the free PAC 2021 tool found on this page as a more advanced step of checking PDFs against WCAG standards. You’ll still need to use Acrobat to fix any issues found because the free tool is only a report, not able to edit PDFs.

How-Tos

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Checker

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.

PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC) 2021 - Free

The PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC) scans PDFs for compliance with WCAG standards. You still need Acrobat Professional to be able to fix any issues found.

This is for more advanced users. The average user can stop after using the Acrobat Accessibility Checker.

  • Download PAC 2021 from the PDF/UA Foundation
  • Extract the contents from the downloaded zip file, then run the program from the extracted folder. No installation is necessary.
  • Use the button with the arrow icon to browse for a PDF file.
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