Coverage & comparison

What PDF Accessibility Scanner checks

For accessibility practitioners: a plain-language reference to all 23 WCAG PDF Techniques and a check-by-check comparison to Adobe Acrobat’s PDF accessibility scan.

PDF1 through PDF23

WCAG 2.2 PDF Techniques

WCAG’s PDF Techniques are best-practice guidance for meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) in PDF documents. Bloom’s PDF Accessibility Scanner can verify or partially verify whether many of these techniques have been correctly applied.

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vs Adobe’s PDF accessibility scan

Adobe Acrobat Pro comparison

Adobe’s PDF accessibility scan is the industry standard but requires a paid license or a paid API key. The table below shows every automatic check Adobe performs and which ones the PDF Accessibility Scanner covers.

Check Adobe Acrobat PDF Accessibility Scanner
Document
Accessibility permission flag ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Image-only PDF detection ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Tagged PDF ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Logical reading order Manual only Manual only
Primary language ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Document title ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Bookmarks ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Color contrast Manual only Manual only
Page Content
Tagged content ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Tagged annotations ✓ Yes ~ Partial
Tab order ✓ Yes ✗ No
Character encoding ✓ Yes ✗ No
Tagged multimedia ✓ Yes ✗ No
Screen flicker ✓ Yes ✗ No
Scripts ✓ Yes ✗ No
Timed responses ✓ Yes ✗ No
Navigation links ✓ Yes ~ Partial
Forms
Tagged form fields ✓ Yes ~ Partial
Field descriptions ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Alternate Text
Figures alternate text ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Nested alternate text ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Associated with content ✓ Yes ~ Partial
Hides annotation ✓ Yes ~ Partial
Other elements alternate text ✓ Yes ✗ No
Tables
Row structure (TR) ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
TH and TD cells ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Table headers ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Row/column regularity ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Lists
List items (LI parentage) ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Lbl and LBody structure ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Headings
Appropriate nesting ✓ Yes ✓ Yes

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