Validating PDF Accessibility Compliance

Workflow

Adobe Acrobat XI Pro

• Tools pane > Accessibility > Full Check
• Make sure all options are checked.
• Click Start Checking to generate a report.
• View the report: Accessibility Checker pane

PAC2

PAC2 is an utility that checks accessibility against the PDF/UA standard, which is stricter than the standard used by the Adobe Acrobat XI accessibility checker.

Download PAC2 here or here.

It's not a normal Windows installer. Instead it unzips a folder containing an .exe and .dlls. The program can be run from that directory.

PAC2 errors and their fixes

Add errors with fixes here as they are encountered.

PDF/UA identifier missing

• Create a file containing the required metadata. (\\diskstation\development\gsg\compliance\pdfuaid.xmp or [1])
• Append the metadata to the file with File > Properties > Description tab > Additional Metadata... > Advanced > Append

Font not embedded

Encountered this in a PDF document containing Chinese characters. Space characters seemed to cause this error.

Hard to track down because PAC2 only shows one instance of the missing font at a time, which requires editing & saving the PDF, re-running the check in PAC2 only to find the next instance of a space character.

Source: Please share your PDF/UA-compliance experience (Acrobat Standards & Accessibility Forum)

Resources

• Validating PDF/UA compliance (The PDF Association)
• PAC2 utility (Access For All Foundation)
• Please share your PDF/UA-compliance experiences (Adobe Acrobat Forum)