PDF accessibility guide
PDF accessibility checker for Mac: an honest workflow
An accessibility checker can surface important evidence, but it cannot prove that every reader receives the intended meaning. Use machine checks to triage the document, then preserve the human review gates.
1. Preserve the source
Record a hash and work from an unchanged PDF. A traceable baseline makes remediation reruns meaningful and prevents an exported report from drifting away from the reviewed file.
2. Inspect machine-readable evidence
Check document title, language, tags, structure-tree signals, PDF/UA declarations and figure alternative-text fields. Keep unavailable formal rules marked as not testable.
3. Route the human checks
Reading order, visual meaning and the quality of alternative text require informed review. Assign those findings to an accessibility specialist or document owner.
4. Rerun and retain the limits
Compare the remediated copy with the baseline and export the evidence with its disclaimers. A clean machine run is not an automatic accessibility certificate.