PDF Document Management Software, Services & Support
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Checking & Correction
Any PDF must be tagged, checked and validated as compliant with Section 508 before it may be certified as accessible. Here are the basic steps of any serious compliance effort, allowing for the variety of possible sources of PDF files. A variety of individual best-practices for each of these steps are available from Adobe Systems and elsewhere.
- Resolve low contrast and color-as-content situations (NOTE: Changes to the document's appearance usually requires the author's agreement!)
- (If a scanned document) OCR and correct the resulting text
- Add links as required
- For untagged PDF files, add tags (eg: run "Add Tags" in Adobe Acrobat Professional)
- Review the tags; check for correct logical order, correct as necessary. Ensure correct semantics are in place (ie, tags are appropriate to the content, and follow best-practices for semantic markup)
- If present, ensure form-fields and annotations are tagged with properties correctly set
- Ensure artifacts are marked
- Add alternate text to Figure tags
- Validate and re-tag tables as necessary
- Ensure file metadata is correct
- Ensure language property is set, ensure multilingual documents have the language attribute set on containing tags
- Add bookmarks (longer documents)
- Quality control (procedural, depends on user skill and document complexity)
Relatively few organizations produce commercially-available tools for either checking or managing tags in PDF files. The following table lists software capable of performing in either checking (validation) or tag-management (remediation) roles following an accessibility check.
| Developer | Software | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Adobe Systems | Acrobat 7.x - 9.x (Tags Panel) | Tags checking and management |
| Net-Centric | Common Look plugin | Tags checking and management (requires Adobe Acrobat) |
| Access for All | PAC | Tags checking (see our review) |
Qualified software applications not listed here may be added upon review. Please contact us to suggest software to be added to this list.
Caveats
There is no software capable of automatically validating any PDF file for Section 508 compliance.
Adobe's Acrobat Professional Accessibility Checker is not capable, by itself, of validating Section 508 compliance.
Adobe's Read Out Loud feature cannot be used to check for Section 508 compliance at all, and here's why.
