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

Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) offers PDF Techniques, which are best practices for keeping PDF documents accessible. 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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