What is the PDF/UA Standard?

The PDF/UA standard (Universal Accessibility)

Published as an International Standard in 2012 (ISO 14289), the PDF/UA format provides clear normative terms for achieving accessibility in the PDF format. The standard is a companion to ISO 32000-1:2008 (the PDF specification). The standard contains specifications for accessible PDF documents, as well as conforming PDF readers and assistive technologies.

The goal of the PDF/UA standard is for everyone to be  able to independently access information contained within a PDF document.  Users should be able to use the documents without assistance from others, in an efficient manner, and be able to receive the same value from the content as people without disabilities. This is accomplished by standardization of the content structure within the PDF files and the technology capabilities available to the end user (including assistive technologies).

The following is not a complete description of the PDF/UA standard. This article is concerned only with the standards that apply to PDF documents. For complete information about the standard, please visit see ISO 14289-1:2014.

WCAG 2.0 compliance

The W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) was written with Web content in mind. The application of WCAG 2.0 to other electronic content requires interpretation to determine how to apply the WCAG 2.0 Principles, Guidelines and Success Criteria. There is not always a 1:1 mapping.

In the case of PDF documents, the international standard (ISO14289-1:2014)  defines requirements specifically for accessible PDF files. The requirements for the PDF/UA standard are complementary to the WCAG 2.0 success criteria, and are therefore compliant with its requirements. This means that a PDF file which is compliant to the PDF/UA standard will also be compliant to ADA, Section 508 and AODA requirements.

PDF/UA technical requirements

The following are just a few of the technical requirements as set out by the PDF/UA standard:

• All real (meaningful) content shall be tagged. Artifacts (non-meaningful content) shall not be tagged.
• The “tag tree” created by the individual tags (representing the document’s content)  should be sorted to reflect the document’s logical reading order.
• All structure types in use shall be standard or mapped to standard
• A manual check of the document is required to ensure that there is no information conveyed using visual means alone (e.g. contrast, colour etc.), and that there is no flickering, blinking or flashing content.
• A document title must be given in the metadata. In the Document Properties, the Initial View settings must be set up so that the title (rather than the file name) appears in the window title (under Window Options).
• Any non-text elements (images, charts, graphs, infographics, logos, etc.) must have corresponding alternative text.

PDF/UA compliance testing

A complete test for compliance requires a software tool as well as some manual checking done by a person.  The software tool will be able to determine the extent to which the PDF document complies with the PDF/UA standard’s purely technical requirements.  Manual checking is required to verify things that the software can not evaluate (such as correct reading order, color contrast, adequacy of alt-text descriptions, heading structure).

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