PDF accessibility compliance
for Australian businesses
Many Australian businesses publish PDFs that some people cannot use. Annual reports, price lists, forms, brochures and terms and conditions are often designed to look good on a page and are unreadable by a screen reader. This guide explains what to aim for and how to get there.
Why it matters
People with vision, motor, hearing or cognitive disability use assistive technology to read documents. If a PDF is not set up properly, a screen reader may skip content, read it in the wrong order or announce nothing at all.
In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with disability in providing goods, services and information. Government agencies and many large organisations also set accessibility requirements for their suppliers. The commonly used benchmark is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA. For legal advice about your own obligations, speak to a lawyer; we are designers, not your legal adviser.
Accessible documents also serve everyone: they are easier to search, to read on a phone and to translate.
What an accessible PDF needs
- Tags. The structure behind the page, which tells assistive technology what is a heading, a paragraph, a list or a table.
- Reading order. The content must read in the logical order, not just the order it was placed on the page.
- Headings. A clear hierarchy so people can navigate.
- Alternative text. Every meaningful image, chart and diagram needs a description. Decorative images should be marked so they are skipped.
- Table structure. Header cells identified, so each data cell makes sense.
- Document language and title. Set correctly so the screen reader pronounces the text properly.
- Colour contrast. Text must be readable against its background, at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text under WCAG AA.
- Real text. A scanned page that is only a picture of text is not accessible until it has been converted to text.
- Accessible forms. Fields need labels, a sensible tab order and clear instructions.
- Links and bookmarks. Links should describe where they go, and long documents should have bookmarks.
Why exporting to PDF is not enough
Many designers and word processors can export tagged PDFs, but the result is rarely compliant. Complex layouts, multi-column text, charts and designed tables nearly always need manual checking and repair. The best fix is to build accessibility into the source document, and then verify the PDF.
How remediation works
- Audit. We review the document against WCAG AA and the PDF accessibility checks and list the issues.
- Fix. We correct the tags, order, headings, alternative text, tables and forms in the PDF, or in the source file where that is better.
- Test. We check the result with automated tools and by reading it the way a screen reader would.
- Deliver. You receive the accessible PDF and a short summary of what was done.
We price remediation at a fixed per-page cost, based on complexity, and can adjust priority and turnaround to suit your deadline.
Start with the documents that matter most
You do not need to fix everything at once. Begin with the documents customers use most, any that are required by contract or regulation, and anything you publish regularly. Then fix the templates, so new documents start accessible.
We provide accessibility work for clients like Australia Post. See our AA compliance page, or start a project.
