Portable Document Format (PDF) files can be accessible but often are not accessible to people with disabilities. The PDF Association has introduced Well Tagged PDF (WTPDF) to help improve accessibility and reuse.
Use cases for this specification include:
- ensuring accessibility of PDF 2.0 files;
- managing reflow of content (e.g., for responsive layout on mobile devices);
- derivation to other formats, including HTML;
- interoperable structuring of unstructured content;
- content and data extraction (e.g., copy-and-paste);
- selection, annotation and redaction;
- enhancing searchability;
- unlocking content and semantics for use by AI;
- change-tracking;
- round-trip editing (e.g., word processor → PDF → word processor).
It is clear from the list of use cases that while WTPDF will make documents more accessible to people who use assistive technology like a screen reader, it offers so many more benefits to everyone.
Generally, the more accessible content is, the easier it is for machine consumption, be that a search engine or AI. The tagging provides context and will improve search results and AI responses for everyone.
There is a free PDF Accessibility Checker tool available on Windows to help you make your PDF's accessible. Download the tool from PDF Accessibility Checker - PAC (pdf-accessibility.org)
PDF's Tagged PDF feature, introduced to the PDF file format in 2001, makes it possible to add semantic markup to content on PDF pages, enabling accessibility, semantic analysis, and reuse. To date, the primary focus for Tagged PDF was accessibility based on ISO 32000-1 (PDF 1.7). No accessibility specification existed for PDF 2.0, nor was there any specification providing guidance on how to create interoperable reusable content in PDF files. With the introduction of WTPDF, the PDF Association addresses the critical needs of both reuse and accessibility, unlocking the full power of PDF 2.0.
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