PDF/UA is an accessibility standard that sets requirements and guidelines to ensure that PDF documents are accessible to all audiences. The acronym stands for Portable Document Format (PDF) Universal Accessibility (UA).
To add to the list of contextual vocab, standards are primarily written by the International Organization for Standardization, which is known as ISO. PDF/UA is a PDF-specific standard that contains the requirements to ensure content is usable and readable.
This standard is considered the “gold standard” for PDF document accessibility and its importance lies in offering equal access and the prioritization of sharing content with everyone.
What is the difference between PDF and PDF/UA?
A common question we receive is, what are the differences in various PDF standards? Should I test my document against standard ABC? Or perhaps standard XYZ? While these answers are not always cut and dry, there are, in general, two types of standards: structural and accessibility.
The structural standard is essentially the rulebook for how to make a PDF. More specifically, the core structural PDF standard is ISO 32000, and it is broad and open-ended. It showcases the possibilities of the PDF file type, ensuring that components like lists and graphics are encoded correctly but doesn’t prioritize their accessibility.
The accessibility standard is more specific and narrows the possibilities of PDF documents to ensure that assistive technologies can adequately share the information. This standard involves verifying document tagging and is a bit more proactive and accessibility centered. For example, if you do everything that is possible in a PDF, it likely will not be accessible, so this accessibility standard, PDF/UA, reigns in those possibilities and guides accessibility-minded document creation.
In summary, many people refer to ISO 32000, the structural standard for PDF documents, simply as “PDF.” PDF/UA, the “gold standard” for document accessibility, tests different parts of the PDF, showcasing the benefits of testing against both a structural and accessibility standard to ensure compliance.
PDF/UA or ISO 14289?
Another recurring question is regarding the naming of PDF/UA. As we mentioned earlier, standards are written by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). As a result, each standard that is released is given a conversational or more casual name but also bears an ISO code. In the case of PDF/UA, this code is 14289. So, in short, ISO 14289 is the formal name of PDF/UA, which is the more common name used for the accessibility standard.
The future of PDF/UA
As we close out this clarification of a few common questions about standards, it’s worth mentioning that this landscape is about to change. As PDF documents have evolved, the accessibility community has evolved to meet the standards. As new capabilities are added to PDF files, our efforts to use them with accessibility in mind also change.
Recently, an update to PDF/UA was released. Using all of the terminology we have explored previously in this article, this standard is formally numbered as ISO 14289-2 and more casually referred to as PDF/UA-2.
PDF/UA-2 is included in another PDF specification known as Well-Tagged PDF, or WTPDF.
In short, this contains all the accessibility requirements from PDF/UA-2 but also includes newer requirements, such as checkpoints about reuse, text extraction, derivation to or from HTML, and more.
For now, the more common option is PDF/UA, but as technology and PDF capabilities advance, it’s only right that our accessibility standards do, too.
