WCAG 2.1 Acrobat Pro Accessibility

Report · Aug 21, 2020

We are looking to audit and adapt a PDF for one of our public sector clients to make it accessible, based on the new UK law that requires public sectors to meet WCAG 2.1 guidelines. I noticed on your website the PDF accessibility tool only goes to WCAG 2.0 which is the previous version. When looking into the differences between these versions, it appears the updates to 2.1 could be relevant to websites only, and not applicable to PDF's - are we right in thinking that? Can you confirm your accessibility guidelines and checker will meet the standards that are to be in place from 23 September 2020?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Report · Jun 16, 2022

Passing the Adobe Acrobat Checker is not a validation of meeting WCAG (2.0 or 2.1). The Acrobat Checker is a good place to start but meeting EN 301-549 standards will always be a series of automated checks and manual review. As a good practice you start with accessibility in the source doc. Then you check with Acrobat and fix the errors then you should use a checker like PAC 2021 that takes a much deeper look at the technical compliance of the code behind your PDF and will give you the best response to the question "Is my document accessible?" Let me know if you have more questions.

Report · Feb 16, 2023

PAC 2021 is not compatible with MacOS (we use both OS here). Not sure if you know of an alternative with the same ability to help us check/ confirm compliance with WCAG 2.1 but thought I would ask!

Report · Apr 26, 2023

When it comes to MAC you really are at a disadvantage for validating accessibility unless you are running Parallels or another PC emulator. PAC does have an online version of PAC 2023 but it is limited and only gives you a report.