PDF ADA Accessibility Is Now The Law

[ClintonGallagher]

#PDF files must be accessible. So sayeth federal law. The deadline for state, regional and municipal governments and statutory licensees who contract with them must comply by April 24th, 2027.

Filee is IMO very well suited for this intent should developers integrate the open-source axe-core testing engine library.

Furthermore, the use of Filee itself is AFIK not accessible itself. I have not tested. Yet. Just an educated guess. I'm all kinds of available to others who want to help make this context possible.

• Clinton Gallagher (clintongallagher@genaimitigation.com)

[KnifeLemon]

Thanks for raising this, @ClintonGallagher.

Some notes on where Filee stands:

• axe-core checks web pages (HTML in a browser), not PDF files. For PDFs the standard is PDF/UA (ISO 14289), and the open-source checker for it is veraPDF.
• Filee doesn't make or check PDF/UA files today. An accessible PDF needs tags: headings, reading order, alternative text for pictures, table headers. A converter can only carry those over when the source document has them (a well-structured Word file, for example). It can't work them out from a scan or a flat PDF. Fixing those is mostly manual work in a tool made for it.
• Filee's own window: the settings pages have names for screen readers, and the donut works from the keyboard (a shortcut opens it on the selected files, arrow keys move, Enter picks). If you test it with a screen reader or keyboard only and something doesn't work, please open an issue with the steps. That's the most useful input for us.

I'll leave this open as an idea, so others who need tagged PDFs can say which conversions they'd need them for.