Testing PDFs for accessibility

[u/BrBearOFS]

I am curious about testing PDFs for accessibility. I have been in this work for a few years.

I am not a professional, just someone who wants to try to help make the groups I belong to more accessible for everyone.

In testing PDFs I will find a few errors in the the PDF tools I use, THEN if I convert the PDF to a Word doc I find just a plethora of issues that were not shown in the PDF testing tool.

For some of these errors, I wonder if some of the issues are rooted in the converstion process. ( some font and formatting sorts of things ) .

For instance, I am working on one document that has Footnotes that appear not to have been formatted correctly they get flagged as Pseudo Footnotes.. and should be inserted in the footers. or addressed in a different manner.

I am just curious what sorts of challenges some of you may have encountered in your efforts at remediation specifically in documents ?

Thank you in advance.!

[u/Comatose_Cockatoo]

PDF to Word conversion has never been reliable. It often makes errors well beyond just accessibility.

[u/rguy84]

Saving a PDF as a Word document will result in a inaccessible document. Starting with an accessible word document, converted to a PDF, then back to a word document will result in a slightly less inaccessible word document. The engine in Adobe does not do a great job converting to word. Saying the word document created is inaccessible therefore the PDF was is not correct 100% of the time.

[u/BrBearOFS → u/rguy84]

This has been my experience as well. My issue is that testing the PDF in a tool like VeraPDF, which I am using instead of PAC due to being in Linux, shows some flaws, but I suspect that there might be deeper issues, and before going to the originator of the document in question, I want to dig a bit deeper. or it might be thata veraPDF gives no answer EXCEPT, that it will say its not accessible due to not having a tagged structure and therefore fails the validation totally and gives no further detail.

[u/rguy84 → u/BrBearOFS]

I reviewed the rules of Vera, since I don't use it. I'd use as a spot check, not a finalization. My favorite example of showing limitations of tools is headings.

What vera does: If headings are present, the first heading in the tree is H1, and checks to make sure it doesn't skip headings (H1 to H4).

What vera does not do:

• flag if there are no headings in the doc,
  
• ask if any headings were mistakenly skipped (ex my org likes to occasionally use italics and no font increase for H2s),
  
• flag if a heading should be a different level based on the characteristics.

I believe word at some point, throws a warning if no headings are used if the doc is over 10 pages.

[u/suscpit]

Have you tried checking the pdf in PAC? You'll be surprised at the amount of things that are going to appear.

[u/BrBearOFS → u/suscpit]

I have used PAC in the past, The issue with PAC is that it currently is WINDOWS ONLY :( Due to its dependecies, it is currently not able to be run in Linux which is what I use as my operating system.

( Or at least I was not able to get it to run and everything I have read seems to say this is not possible, but would be happy to hear from anyone else who may have gotten it to run, as I LOVE PAC. ?)

[u/Vat5an → u/BrBearOFS]

I have been using VMware Workstation + Windows 11 on Linux to run PAC. It is free.

VMWare lets you share folders with the Linux OS so you can copy paste a file and then run PAC from within the VM. It does run slower than it natively runs on a Windows PC but it does the trick. The other option is to get a cheap mini-PC off Amazon and setup Remote Desktop on it.

[u/suscpit → u/Vat5an]

I second VMware, in my case I use a mac, and I run PAC through Parallels.

[u/Sweet-Bunch-9369 → u/suscpit]

PAC is the gold standard for identifying accessibility issues. Love it!

[u/ZuperHuman]

I use zylyn to test pdf for free I think they use some ai for fixes too check it out

[u/Traditional-Tip3422]

PDF to Word conversion destroys document structure. Testing the converted file measures the converter failure, not the original PDF accessibility

[u/suzhouCN]

Isn't it just best to convert the PDF into an HTML version to make it accessible (and keep the original link to the source PDF)? From what I understand we cannot/should not tamper with an existing PDF file if is from a public record (e.g. State, County, or City PDF).

[u/BrBearOFS → u/suzhouCN]

My source documents are not from a Governmental Agency at all. I would be interested to see how many people use an HTML based document that was not converted from a Word file, my guess would be few , but I am willing to be wrong !

[u/Necessary_Ear_1100]

Yeah converting from PDF to Word is a no no. If you find issues with the PDF document, note then update/fix the original electronic file then convert to PDF as did with the original PDF.

Converting from PDF to another format (other than HTML) will create a lot of accessibility errors

[u/PDFxt]

PDF to Word is definitely not the way to go. If your PDF is less than 200 pages, try our free trial online Accessibility Remediation - pdfxt.com . If you have larger files or need more pages, just DM us and happy to offer you more pages to evaluate.