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How to make your PDFs WCAG accessible

Most organisations have hundreds of PDFs lying around: minutes, forms, reports, brochures. Many of them cannot be read properly with a screen reader. Text comes out in the wrong order, images are silent, tables are mush, and the form cannot be filled in. Doing better is not hard. It only requires knowing what it takes. This is the guide I wish everyone had read.

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What WCAG means for PDFs

WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, was written for web pages, but the principles apply to documents too: content must be perceivable, operable and understandable, and robust enough to work with assistive technology. An accessible PDF can be navigated, read and completed with a screen reader, magnification and a keyboard. In the EU, the Web Accessibility Directive covers public-sector documents, and the European Accessibility Act has covered a range of private products and services since 2025. But the reason to do it is simpler: otherwise some of your readers cannot use what you send.

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What an accessible PDF needs

1. Structure. Headings, paragraphs and lists marked as what they are, not just as bold text.
2. Tags. The document must be tagged so the screen reader knows the structure and reading order.
3. Reading order that follows the meaning, not the layout.
4. Alternative text for every image, chart and figure, and empty tags for pure decoration.
5. Language set on the document, and on passages in another language.
6. Tables with real header cells and a logical structure.
7. Links with text that says where they lead.
8. Forms with named fields that can be completed by keyboard.
9. Contrast of at least 4.5:1 for normal text, and no information carried by colour alone.
10. Embedded fonts, so the text can be read as text.
11. A title in the document properties, not only in the file name.

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Step by step

1. Start in the source document. Use the built-in heading styles in Word or InDesign, write alternative text on images, and make tables as tables. Most of the work is here.

2. Export properly. In Word: Save as PDF with "Document structure tags for accessibility" enabled. Never print to PDF; it strips the structure.

3. Set title and language in the document properties.

4. Check tags and reading order in Acrobat Pro with the Accessibility tools. Fix what is wrong.

5. Add alternative text where it is missing, and mark decoration as artifacts.

6. Fix tables so header rows and columns are marked.

7. Make forms fillable with named fields and a sensible tab order.

8. Check contrast with a contrast tool.

9. Run the automated checks in Acrobat and in PAC 2024.

10. Test with a screen reader. Open the file with NVDA or JAWS and read it from start to finish with the keyboard only. It is the only test that shows what the user experiences.

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Tools

• Adobe Acrobat Pro for tags, reading order and forms.
• PAC 2024 (PDF Accessibility Checker) from the PDF/UA Foundation, free, for checking against PDF/UA and WCAG.
• axesPDF and CommonLook for large volumes of documents.
• NVDA (free) and JAWS for the test that counts.

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Common problems

• Scanned documents are images. Run OCR and check the result.
• Complex layouts with columns and boxes produce the wrong reading order. Simplify, or fix the order by hand.
• Large documents should be split and given bookmarks.
• Mathematics needs MathML or a text description.
• Old templates create the same errors again and again. Fix the template once.

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Keeping it accessible

Make accessible templates. Teach the colleagues who produce documents to use them. Write it into your guidelines for digital content. Check the most-used documents regularly. And consider whether the document needs to be a PDF at all, or whether a web page would be better for everyone.