About PDFAccessly

PDFAccessly is a self-service tool that makes existing PDFs accessible for people who use screen readers and other assistive technology. It is built for the staff of state and local governments, school districts, public libraries and colleges preparing for the ADA Title II web rule.

Facts

• What it does: checks PDFs against PDF/UA-1 machine-testable rules (free), and fixes them automatically: tag structure and reading order, headings, lists, tables, image alternative text, decorative images marked as artifacts, document title and language, OCR for scanned pages, and link descriptions.
• Validation: every fixed file is validated with veraPDF (PDF/UA-1 profile) and checked word by word against the original so no text is lost.
• Price: $0.45 to $0.78 per page in packs of 50, 250 and 1000 pages that never expire; 5 free pages every month; files that fail validation are not charged.
• Limits: up to 100 pages and 25 MB per file; English documents.
• Not included: fillable form field remediation, color contrast changes inside documents, human review.
• Works best on: documents exported from Word or Excel, and clean scans. Designed newsletters and flyers get partial fixes and need review.
• Data: files are deleted after 7 days or when you delete them. See the privacy policy.

How it works

We use open-source PDF software to rebuild each document's tag structure from its layout, an AI model to describe images and check headings against an image of each page, and veraPDF to validate the result. Each file comes with a report listing what changed and what a person should still review.

What we do not claim

No software can guarantee that a document complies with the ADA or WCAG. About a third of PDF/UA's failure conditions cannot be tested by software at all. We say what we fixed, what we validated, and what you should check.

Who runs it

PDFAccessly is operated by Xiaohong Guo. Contact: support@pdfaccessly.com.