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PDF Accessibility

PDF Accessibility Checker

A full structural report on what a screen reader will and will not find.

Processed locally in your browser. Your file is not uploaded to any server. How this works

  1. 01Add your file
  2. 02PDF Accessibility Checker
  3. 03Download

Runs in your browser · nothing uploaded

About PDF accessibility checker

Accessibility in a PDF rests on something invisible. A screen reader does not look at the page; it cannot, because the page is a set of drawing instructions with no inherent meaning — a heading is just larger text at some coordinates. What assistive technology actually reads is the tag tree, a hierarchy stored under the document’s StructTreeRoot that says *this is a heading, this is a paragraph, this is a table, this is a figure with this description*. When that tree is present, a PDF is navigable and comprehensible. When it is absent, a screen reader falls back to guessing from the raw content stream order, which in a two-column layout commonly interleaves the columns line by line and produces something close to nonsense. This checker examines the machine-verifiable indicators across all of it: whether a tag tree exists, whether headings form a sensible hierarchy, whether figures carry alt text, whether a document language and title are declared, and whether the reading order looks plausible.

How to PDF accessibility checker

  1. 01

    Open the PDF

    Drop in the document you want to assess. It is parsed in this tab; nothing is sent anywhere.

  2. 02

    Read the summary

    Start with whether the document is tagged at all — nearly every other check depends on that answer.

  3. 03

    Work through the findings

    Each finding names what was checked, what was found and which pages are affected.

  4. 04

    Fix and re-check

    Remediate in the tool that produced the PDF, then run it through again to confirm.

What this tool does

  • Checks the whole structural picture: tags, headings, alt text, language, title and reading order
  • Findings grouped by severity, so blocking problems surface before minor ones
  • Page references on every finding, so you know where to look
  • Plain-language explanation of why each indicator matters to a screen reader user
  • Runs locally, so confidential documents can be assessed without uploading them

Limitations worth knowing

Every PDF tool has constraints. Stating them plainly is more useful than discovering them halfway through your work.

  • This is not a certified PDF/UA or WCAG validator and does not issue a conformance statement. It reports machine-verifiable indicators only.
  • Full conformance requires human judgement that no automated tool can supply: whether alt text is actually meaningful, whether heading levels reflect the real document structure, whether reading order makes sense to a reader.
  • A document can pass every mechanical check here and still be unusable in practice — for example, if every figure’s alt text reads “image”.
  • Complex tables, nested lists and mathematical content need manual review; their tagging correctness cannot be determined mechanically.

How your file is handled

This tool runs entirely inside this browser tab. When you choose a file, your browser reads it from your own disk and hands the bytes to JavaScript running on this page — no network request carries your document anywhere. You can confirm that yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network panel, and run the tool. You will see no upload.

Nothing is stored after the fact. Closing or reloading this tab discards the file, the result and everything derived from them, because none of it ever left your machine. Read how local processing works.

Questions about PDF accessibility checker

Does passing these checks mean my PDF is accessible?

No. It means the machine-verifiable indicators are present. Whether the document is genuinely usable depends on judgement calls a program cannot make — whether alt text describes the image usefully, whether headings reflect real structure. Treat a pass as a necessary floor, not a certificate.

Is this a PDF/UA or WCAG certification?

No, and no automated tool can issue one. Both standards contain requirements that explicitly need human evaluation. We report what can be determined mechanically and are clear about where that stops.

Why does tagging matter so much?

Because assistive technology reads the tag tree, not the visual page. Without tags there is no way to know which text is a heading or which order to read in, so the reader guesses from the raw content stream — which in multi-column layouts often interleaves columns into nonsense.

My PDF has no tags at all. What now?

Re-export it from the original source with tagging enabled — Word, InDesign and LaTeX can all produce tagged PDFs. Adding a full tag tree to an existing untagged PDF is substantial manual work in a dedicated authoring tool.

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