What It Means
PDF remediation is the process of making a PDF accessible.
Most PDFs are "flat" — they contain visual layout information but no semantic structure. A sighted reader can parse headings, columns, and tables visually. A screen reader cannot. It reads the raw text stream, which often has no logical order, no heading hierarchy, and no table markup.
Remediation is the process of adding that missing structure: tagging every element with its semantic role, establishing reading order, writing alt text for images, marking up table headers, declaring the document language, and embedding fonts with correct Unicode mappings.
The output is a PDF that conforms to the PDF/UA standard (ISO 14289) — the ISO specification for universally accessible PDF documents — and meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria for non-web documents.
The Problem
Manual remediation doesn't scale.
Traditional PDF remediation is done by hand in Adobe Acrobat Pro or specialized tools like CommonLook. A trained specialist opens the document, inspects every element, adds tags, writes alt text, fixes reading order, and runs validation passes. Each pass can take 30 minutes to several hours per document depending on complexity.
At typical vendor rates of $4–10 per page, remediating a backlog of hundreds or thousands of public documents costs tens of thousands of dollars — and takes months of calendar time.
With the ADA Title II deadline approaching, many organizations are discovering that manual remediation vendors are at capacity and cannot deliver in time.
14 days until the ADA Title II deadline
By April 24, 2026, entities serving 50,000+ residents must make all digital content WCAG 2.1 AA compliant — including every PDF.
How It Works
Automated remediation. Validated output.
Our pipeline runs six stages on every document:
Baseline Analysis
veraPDF runs a full PDF/UA validation scan, identifying every failed rule and structural gap.
AI Classification
Vision models classify every element — headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, figures, formulas, and decorative artifacts.
Repair Crew
A multi-agent system writes alt text, builds heading hierarchies, repairs table structure, fixes reading order, and resolves font embedding issues.
Structure Tagging
The full PDF/UA tag tree is built with proper nesting, reading order, and role mapping.
Font Embedding
Missing ToUnicode CMaps are generated and fonts are re-embedded so text extraction works correctly for assistive technology.
Final Validation
A second veraPDF pass confirms conformance to PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2. The document ships only if it passes.
Output
What you get back.
Every remediated document includes the compliant PDF, a validation report showing before-and-after veraPDF results, and a detailed breakdown of every fix applied — headings structured, alt texts written, tables marked up, reading order corrected, fonts embedded.
Standards
Validated against every standard that matters.
Validation is performed by veraPDF, the open-source, industry-standard PDF/A and PDF/UA validator maintained by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association. veraPDF implements machine-verifiable checks for every "shall" statement in the PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2 specifications.