PDF accessibility checker
Every scanner checks web pages. Almost none check the PDFs hanging off them — which is backwards, because the board minutes, enrolment forms and policy documents are usually PDFs, and usually scans with no text in them at all.
What this checks
- Is there any text at all
- A scan of a printed page is an image. A screen reader gets nothing from it, and neither does search. This is the most common and most severe PDF failure.
- Is it tagged
- Tags tell assistive technology which text is a heading, which is a list, and what order to read in. Without them the reader guesses from visual position.
- Language and title
- Screen readers choose a pronunciation engine from the document language, and announce the filename when there is no title. A title can also be set but not displayed, which is a separate flag almost nobody knows about — the IRS Form W-9 gets this wrong.
Not a PDF/UA audit, and it does not pretend to be. Whether a table’s headers are associated correctly, or whether the reading order genuinely makes sense, still needs a person.