The Basics of PDF Accessibility

The content of accessible documents is designed and structured in such a way that it can be used by everyone, regardless of their individual abilities. The core of a digital accessible document lies in its ability to be fully understood and navigated with assistive technologies like screen readers, braille displays, or magnification software. Whether a document is accessible can be checked with just one click using the PDF Accessibility Checker: PAC 2024

"Ensuring accessibility in the digital space is one of the steps we need to take to achieve equality and inclusion." (René Jaun, Tech Journalist and Accessibility Specialist)

At first glance, accessible PDF documents look almost identical to any other PDF. However, the accessibility features mainly come from the document's structural parent tree (also called the tag tree), which assigns a technical role to each element in the PDF. For example, when headings are correctly tagged in the structural parent tree, people using screen readers can jump from heading to heading, making it much easier to navigate the document.

You can find out how Aleksander Pavkovic reads an accessible PDF with his screen reader on our  YouTube-Channel.

Accessible documents help promote equality and inclusion. When information is not equally accessible to all people, a digital barrier is created that excludes certain groups of individuals. Equal Access is an essential part of full inclusion.

Those who still opt against accessible documents must consider not only the social but also the legal consequences. Many countries have laws and regulations requiring businesses and public institutions to provide accessible documents. One example is the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) in Germany, which will be mandatory for a large number of companies starting on June 28, 2025. This law is based on the European Accessibility Act (EAA), an EU directive passed in June 2019 that sets minimum requirements for digital accessibility. As a directive, the EAA requires individual EU countries to implement it into national law, which is why the BFSG was created in Germany.

However, accessibility is not just a legal obligation but also an opportunity. Organizations that design their content to be accessible enhance the trust and satisfaction of their customers and employees. Accessible communication allows organizations to reach a significantly larger audience. Additionally, everyone benefits from better-structured and more accessible documents, which can also be proven through higher visibility online. Well-structured content (such as that in accessible documents) is more easily read by search engines.

PDF accessibility is easy to implement if the source document is prepared correctly from the start. If you work cleanly in Microsoft Word and are familiar with the software (for example, by using format templates), you can lay a strong foundation for creating an accessible PDF. When the Word document is finalized and then converted into a PDF using axesWord, all the accessibility features you’ve set up will be preserved.

"When I consider accessibility in the source document and then generate the PDF using the right converter, both the complexity and the time required are significantly reduced." (Birgit Peböck, Barrierefrei PDF OG)

For more information on how to easily and conveniently create accessible PDFs with axesWord, check out: axesWord: axesWord: Accessible PDFs with a few clicks - axes4

If you've already created a PDF and want to optimize it for accessibility afterward, axesPDF can help you find and quickly fix errors in the document.

More information on axesPDF can be found here: Check & correct PDF accessibility easily - axes4