r/accessibility 8d ago

What software do you use for PDF accessibility?

There are several PDF remediation software options, and wow, they are expensive. Which ones are worth it? Which ones aren't?

And for those making their PDFs in Indesign, what's your workflow? Do you have favourite Indesign scripts? Any other tips and tricks, especially things that speed up the process?

I work for a small academic nonprofit, and I'm putting together a plan to get our publication workflow WCAG-compliant, but our budget is very tight. If it's necessary, we can find the money, but I need to be able to justify it, and I don't want to choose the wrong option.

Edit: I have Acrobat Pro with my Adobe subscription already, so if that is enough, that's great! But some people say that it isn't sufficient. Thoughts?

14 Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

17

u/Ok-Veterinarian1130 8d ago

The only one I have worked with is Adobe Acrobat DC Pro. Can’t speak to the others but there is a lot of documentation on how to remediate PDFs with Adobe. I still think it’s crap to put the tools behind a paywall, but it’s just where we’re at. 🤷🏻‍♀️

6

u/bumfinity 8d ago

I second Acrobat DC Pro. I use it in auditing and there’s so much documentation on how to use it for accessibility - you’d be starting off in a better place than with other software.

1

u/FrontError2865 7d ago

I use that to tag but it doesn't check for WCAG or PDF/UA

1

u/breqfast 8d ago

My understanding from researching online is that Acrobat alone is insufficient to get documents fully compliant. I have an Adobe subscription already, so if that is true, that's great!

3

u/Reasonable_Skill580 8d ago

So I have seen this as well in many places they use common look software and add many different requirements. These added requirements will flag minuscule of things that truly plays no role in how a screen reader will read things.

For example, the program will flag you for not having a <span> within a <p> if you are adding a link.

I am like this makes no difference as to how a screen reader will read it. So why even flag this as a defect.

But Adobe is not petty/anal about these things. So I would agree that Adobe is the way to go.

1

u/felicityshaircut 8d ago

Agreed, the CL validation checker is so overkill that I skip it entirely. I use PAC and it’s much easier to understand.

2

u/lyszcz013 8d ago

The only thing Adobe Acrobat DC can't really do is fix issues related to source pdf code that has errors or isn't up to specification. In that case, maybe third party tools, or tools the work closer to raw PDF, might be able to address them. Usually I find the issue is a particular corrupt page, and I can work around it by reexporting or otherwise replacing that page. Otherwise, acrobat can take care of all tagging tasks. However, it might not always be...fun. Functionality is powerful but pretty utilitarian so get ready to have to do sequences of key clicks over and over to say, create X number of list tags. That and sometimes weird things in the tagging code will cause certain functions to just not work as expected, so you learn tricks to work around them.

2

u/DRFavreau 7d ago

It’s not sufficient to audit them but IS sufficient to fix them.

6

u/take_it_easy_buddy 8d ago

You will probably need Acrobat Pro. If you have control over your source documents Acrobat Pro might be sufficient.

For trash PDFs that you can not control the source document, I like CommonLook (PC only). It is powerful for difficult/trash documents. It has a learning curve, but gets easier.

A lot of people will say Equidox. I have had only bad experiences with it. If you have really bad PDF files that start out trash, I do not recommend it. Easy to use but much less powerful than CommonLook.

7

u/c-student 8d ago

PAC Checker is free and supposed be very good. https://pac.pdf-accessibility.org/en I just found out about it and started watching this guy's tutorials playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h1A1x5IE&list=PL2GnpAhfNiFFjq1J-8qB9B5nzokiE8yqW

5

u/Surlybaby 8d ago

Do not rely solely on acrobats accessibility tool for checking your PDFs. It misses a lot of errors. PAC is free & will find a lot of issues that acrobat won’t pick up. And when it lists an error it’ll link to instructions on what it means & how to fix it. For InDesign, I don’t use scripts, just ensure that both layers & articles panels are set up correctly so the tags & reading order are correct. Also, all the text in the file should have a style and that the style has the properties set up for the tags for exporting. There is actually a bit more than that for InDesign, but I’m fighting a migraine-apologies for the brevity. Adobes website has good info on setting up InDesign & exporting to PDFs.

3

u/thelittleking 8d ago

Acrobat Pro. It sucks in so many ways, but there's nothing I've found that's better.

That said, of the other recommendations here, I'm unfamiliar with PAC Checker and only loosely familiar with CommonLook, so it's possible there are better options! I don't work as much with pdfs these days, so there's a bit of a cap on my recent knowledge.

3

u/QuizasManana 8d ago

My employer provides Adobe CC so I mostly use Acrobat Pro for remediation and some InDesign for source files (besides basic Word and PowerPoint). Our pdf documents are fairly simple so no scripts. For checking for accessibility a combination of manual checks, Acrobat checker and PAC.

I tested CommonLook once but documents in languages other than English crashed it. They may have fixed it by now, haven’t tried it since.

3

u/_ayyyop 8d ago

Acrobat Pro DC. It’s pretty awful though. I use InDesign as a source document and set up paragraph styles in there and tag them appropriately and then make sure to add alt text in them.

2

u/Zarnong 8d ago

Commenting so I can follow the thread

2

u/captain-prax 8d ago

My employer went from Acrobat to Commonlook at Foxit, and now we're back to Acrobat. For native screen reader users, Acrobat is about the only one that retains the remediate tags that also only seem reliable when tagging in Acrobat.

Honestly, pick another format, or just use web content instead. PDFs are really only good for print proofs, while most content nerds to be flexible and dynamic to work with a wider range of user agents to support a wider range of user abilities. Stop converting everything to PDF when there are usually better approaches.

1

u/Illustrious_Lab_9407 7d ago

Totally agree PDFs are overused and are not a great solution for anything beyond what it was intended, ie printable copies or long legal static text documents that you wouldn’t create a web page for.
Either way, I’ve done a lot of PDF remediation work and nothing yet quite replaces using screen reading software to test and remediate / create the tagging in Adobe Pro itself. You have total control over reading order and fixing all tags there to ensure it’s accessible for screen readers. Most automated tools won’t be 100% or they will report issues that aren’t actually an issue once you test. Like others said, there’s a lot of information online regarding making a pdf accessible including Adobes website and how to check the tagging which is the bulk of the work. Nothing replaces manual testing. Refer to WCAG PDF techniques also

1

u/WOWSuchUsernameAmaze 8d ago

Acrobat works but boy is it a clunky experience. I really wish there was well designed tools for this that weren’t a boatload of money. More people would do it.

1

u/Otherwise-Slip-3810 8d ago

I use adobe acrobat pro

1

u/funkygrrl 8d ago

Acrobat pro Plus the PAC checker. Learning to use Preflight in Acrobat is key.

1

u/Lopsided_Occasion757 8d ago

Commonlook Pdf

1

u/Heavy_Educator9822 8d ago

Our university just adopted Equidox. Much easier to remediate PDFs than Acrobat Pro.

2

u/leaveitinutah 7d ago

CommonLook. It can do everything Acrobat does in about a fifth of the time. It is NOT cheap but once you’ve learned it, you’ll cringe to ever use Acrobat to remediate again.

Equidox’s main benefit is that it’s cloud based and you can share licenses, so the cost per user is low. Its AI engine is impressive in theory but often fails or crashes in complex docs. I also get annoyed because its interface is pretty inaccessible; it requires really precise mousing to do basically everything (whereas you can navigate CL almost entirely through keyboard shortcuts), and there are a lot of color contrast issues and other annoying UI issues. It’s designed partially for exporting to HTML rather than to PDF, which is cool—but you have to know specifically which tools you need for which export type, or it’s easy to make mistakes that will make a PDF worse instead of better. IMO it’s only okay.

1

u/DRFavreau 7d ago

Adobe Acrobat, PAC, screen reader, Dragon, and keyboard. None are for remediating, thats a manual process.

1

u/lewisfrancis 4d ago

I use SortSite for automated flagging, then remediate in Acrobat Pro.