Guide

PDF accessibility: making your PDFs accessible

Last updated: 29 June 2026

Accessibility isn't only about your web pages — the documents you publish count too. Invoices, reports, menus, manuals, and forms in PDF form are squarely in scope under WCAG and the EU Accessibility Act, and an inaccessible PDF is a common gap teams forget. Here's what makes a PDF accessible and how to get there. (General information, not legal advice. Note: WCAGwise scans web pages, not PDFs — this is guidance, not a tool feature.)

The single biggest issue: is it real text?

Many PDFs are just scanned images of a document — to a screen reader they're a blank page. The foundation of an accessible PDF is selectable, real text. If you can't highlight the words with your cursor, it's an image and needs OCR (optical character recognition) or rebuilding from the source. Always export from the source app (Word, InDesign, Google Docs) rather than scanning where possible.

What an accessible PDF needs

  • Tags & structure: a "tagged" PDF exposes headings, paragraphs, and lists to assistive tech — the PDF equivalent of semantic HTML. Use real heading styles in the source so they carry over.
  • Logical reading order: the order content is announced should match the visual order; multi-column layouts often need the reading order corrected.
  • Alt text on images: meaningful descriptions for informative images; mark decorative ones as artifacts so they're skipped (see alt text best practices).
  • Table headers: data tables need marked header cells so screen-reader users can navigate rows/columns.
  • Document language & title: set the language and a descriptive document title in the PDF properties.
  • Accessible forms: PDF form fields need labels/tooltips and a logical tab order (see accessible forms).
  • Contrast & not-color-alone: the same rules as the web apply (see color contrast).

A practical workflow

  • Start in the source document. Use real heading styles, alt text, and proper tables in Word/Docs/InDesign — most accessibility carries into the export.
  • Export as a tagged PDF (the option to preserve structure/tags), not "print to PDF," which often drops tags.
  • Check + repair in a PDF tool with an accessibility checker (e.g. Acrobat's), fixing reading order and tags.
  • Prefer HTML when you can. Often the most accessible "PDF" is not a PDF at all — a real web page is easier to make and keep accessible. Offer an HTML version where it makes sense.

Don't forget the page it lives on

A perfect PDF linked from an inaccessible page still leaves users stuck. Make sure the link text is descriptive (not "click here"), and that the surrounding page passes too. Scan your site free with WCAGwise to check the web pages that host your documents. WCAGwise is an audit aid for web pages, not a legal guarantee — for the PDFs themselves, use a dedicated PDF checker as above.

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