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Re: Tools for PDF Remediation

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Nov 4, 2024 8:15AM

On 2024-10-31 3:11 a.m., Vaibhav Saraf wrote:
> I was doing some research on various PDF remediation tools used and ran
> into this 7-year old discussion on this very same list:
> https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=8432
> [....]
> since this discussion is now 7 years old, are the
> different tools discussed have more or less the same effectiveness or
> utility or some upped or downed itself anyone's pecking order?

Since 2017, a few new tools were released and some improvements made,
but the most popularly recommended tools are mostly the same.

As L Snider wrote:
> Sadly Acrobat still rules with the most it can remidiate .

Adobe Acrobat Still Required

Adobe Acrobat Pro continues to be a core required tool for PDF
remediation. Adobe released a new user interface for Acrobat last year,
but lots of folks doing remediation turn it off because the old
interface seems more efficient. Adobe has incorporated so-called AI
features into Acrobat and you can't get rid of the constant nagging to
try it unless you turn off the new interface. Acrobat is more stable
than it used to be (in my opinion!). The Continuous Release cycle of
Acrobat updates more frequently than it used to, and incremental
improvements and even new features actually do appear from time to time.
Though Adobe now periodically also breaks essential functionality and
sometimes releases versions with new critical bugs.

Adobe Auto Tag Much Improved

Acrobat's Auto Tag feature is significantly better than it used to be.
Adobe has also been working on an API for automated tagging (presumably
to better compete with Crawford Technologies and Equidox and others who
provide mass conversion to accessible PDF). Currently, anyone can create
an Adobe account and use the Adobe Auto-Tag API demo to autotag a PDF
for free (without even owning Acrobat Pro):
https://acrobatservices.adobe.com/dc-accessibility-playground/main.html

CommonLook and AxesPDF Still Lead

I see that I wrote quite a long post in that WebAIM thread back in 2017.
A lot of the details I provided comparing CommonLook and AxesPDF remain
true:
https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_message?id=36073

CommonLook (formerly Netcentric) is now Allyant. Most professional
remediators recommend CommonLook PDF if you are forced to choose just
one remediation tool other than Acrobat:
https://allyant.com/commonlook-accessibility-suite/cl-pdf/

Though I personally continue to use AxesPDF alongside Acrobat instead:
https://www.axes4.com/en/software-services/axespdf

For folks with a big enough budget doing dedicated PDF remediation work,
I would  recommend having both of these.

In that 2017 thread, I wrote about how offensively expensive CommonLook
was:
"This month, I was quoted a price of CAD $15,000, PER YEAR, PER LICENSE,
(that's about USD $11,800 or $10,000 Euros PER YEAR!) for commercial use
of CommonLook GA (i.e., for a license that would allow me to provide PDF
remediation services to 3rd parties). To me, that is completely insane
pricing. I would go so far as to call it offensively high."

Since, then, I've seen other price quotes that put CommonLook more in
the same ballpark as AxesPDF. So while CommonLook is still more
expensive than AxesPDF, I don't think you'll find that it is even twice
(let alone ten times) as expensive. It has occurred to me in the
intervening years that my 2017 quotation may have been an error on the
part of their sales representative. Who knows. They didn't follow up and
there's no way to check. Several years ago CommonLook actually published
their prices publicly for a period of maybe 6-12 months, so during that
time it was easy to compare costs between CommonLook and AxesPDF.
(AxesPDF has always published their software licensing prices in a clear
and open way). But Allyant now hides their prices again, so the only way
you can find out how much it costs is by asking colleagues or filling in
a form and getting them to contact you. And sales reps can randomly
offer you whatever price they think you will pay. I personally can't
stand any software licensing system that requires me to phone someone to
find out how much it will cost.

PDFix Is New

PDFix is a new remediation tool that's appeared in the last few years.
The video demos of PDFix Desktop Pro look interesting:
https://pdfix.net/products/pdfix-desktop-pro/

I've not actually tested any of their software, but it is in active
development and may be worth considering. One key differentiating
feature is that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux - whereas CommonLook
and AxesPDF only run on Windows - though you can run them on a Mac under
Parallels or whatever.

PAC Is Improved and Becoming Default Validator

The validators are all better than they used to be. PAC (PDF
Accessibility Checker) in particular is in active development: four
updates have been released this year. It crashes less frequently and It
now tests against both PDF/UA and WCAG. This year it introduced a new
"Quality" check tab which checks against best practices, but which has
come under criticism because the tests it runs are sometimes not nuanced
enough, which leads to sometimes wrong or misleading warning flags.

I would say that PAC 2024 has become the default tool for checking PDF
accessibility (as opposed to Allyant/CommonLook's Validator or veraPDF).
It's free, easy to use, easy to install, it generates simple,
good-looking reports you can share. It is especially popular in Europe
where PDF/UA has I think taken stronger root than in North America,
where we still emphasize the use of the WCAG to evaluate PDFs - despite
the fact that WCAG is poorly suited to this task.

Generating PDF/UA from Word Processor?

This last section isn't about remediation tools, but it may interest
folks who remediate files. Before starting to create a PDF, the first
question should always be: would this be better in HTML? But if you
really can't avoid creating a PDF, then the next best thing is to create
a PDF that doesn't require any remediation at all. And the tools
available to generate accessible PDFs directly from word processing
software are definitely getting better and better. Microsoft Word and
Office 365 continue to improve, even though they still can't generate a
PDF/UA out-of-the-box. CommonLook and Axes4 both offer add-ins that
actually can help generate a PDF/UA directly from Office. LibreOffice
does a pretty good job of generating a PDF/UA all on its own. So does
LaTeX. GrackleDocs is software that integrates with Google Docs to help
create PDF/UA files directly out of Google Docs. All those tools are
getting better and better.

Phil.

D4K Communications
Toronto, Canada