Inaccessible PDF

Access to digital public information is a fundamental right for everyone;
also PDF documents created by government authorities constitutes digital public service.

Barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to a website
by people with disabilities can be considered discrimination.

The EU Web Accessibility Directive ensures that all users,
regardless of functional ability, have equal access to
information and functionality on the web.

Sweden as a nation is bound to:

• the UN Declaration on Human Rights,


• the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,


• the Swedish Anti-Discrimination Act, and


• the Swedish Act on Access to Digital Public Services
  (SFS 2018:1937 & SFS 2018:1938)

Declarations, conventions and acts that are technology-neutral.
No matter which technology the government entity chooses for its
digital services (web/HTML, PDF, ...) it must be provided in a form
ensuring it is accessible for everyone in the society.

Swedish authorities are thus since long bound to comply with
and apply these regulations in their daily operations.

How well do Swedish authorities and public operations comply
with current accessibility acts in practice?

PDF documents from authorities and organizations (often with public funding)
who in many cases also has a special mission to work for an
accessible society for everyone.

We have examined hundreds of PDF documents with regard to
how well they meet the ISO standard PDF/UA for accessible PDF;
documents that intentionally are published to the public on
public websites by the Government Offices, Parliament,
authorities, agencies, parliamentary parties, organizations;
see samples of these documents below.

In no case have we managed to find documents that meet the PDF/UA Standard
which means that Swedish authorities and other actuators probably violates
the Swedish Act on Access to Digital Public Services for everyone
in a systematic way!

Clearly, the mandatory accessibility legislation has completely passed
our politicians, decision makers and government officials.
None of the individuals involved seem to have understood that
the applicable laws also apply own daily operations. It is remarkable!

Remarkable is also that not even the most central ones of the steering
documents for Swedish authorities or government reports are
prepared to be accessible for everyone in our society.

If not even our country's most central public entities,
The Prime Minister's Office and the Parliament, are capable to publish
accessible PDF documents according to the requirements of
the Swedish Act on Access to Digital Public Services,
why then should other authorities care?

Credibility requires immediate action!

All PDF documents referenced below are made available to the public from public websites.

The documents have been tested against how well they meet
the ISO Standard 14289, PDF/UA, for accessible PDF.
In present form form they do not comply with PDF/UA and
are therefore not accessible for everyone.

The examples below are merely the "top of an iceberg" of ordinary
operating documents from Swedish authorities that are
not accessible for everyone.

A reliable compliance test for the ISO Standard PDF/UA
always requires at least two stages of validation:

• a programmatic syntactic test, which can be performed by a piece of software, and


• an interactive semantic test carried out by a human.

The documents' syntactic conformity with PDF/UA
have been controlled with various reliable testing tools:

• axesPDF QuickFix




• PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC 3)




• callas pdfGoHTML, callas pdfaPilot, callas pdfToolbox




• ...and others





Above error message is submitted when a document lacks proper
internal structure tagging, which all Assistive Technology (AT) devices
(such as screen readers, PDF readers) depend entirely on
to accurately reproduce the contents of a PDF document.
Such a PDF document is thus not accessible for everyone.

Do you need help to create accessible PDF in compliance with PDF/UA?

Accessible PDF (PDF/UA) ensures accessibility to digital public service for everyone.

We help customers to create any volume of accessible PDF documents,
out of native MS Office (Word and PowerPoint) and Adobe InDesign documents,
and PDF documents generated by other tools.

Interesting?

Accessible PDF - Requires Full Compliance with PDF/UA

• Accessible PDF - Requires Full Compliance with the ISO Standard PDF/UA

Accessible PDF (PDF/UA) for Accessible eGovernment

• Entirely Barrier-Free - Accessible PDF (PDF/UA) for Accessible eGovernment

Samples of Accessible PDF Documents - Accessible for Everyone!

• Samples of Accessible PDF Documents

Tools for Creation of PDF/UA-Compliant PDF Documents

• Recommended Tools for Creation of Accessible PDF Documents

Accessible PDF as a Service - PDF/UA Services

• Accessible PDF as a Service

Training in PDF Standards

• Training in PDF Standards

Next-Generation PDF

• Next-Generation PDF - PDF and the “Any Screen” Challenge