PDF Remediation Tool

Inspect Structure and Reading Order

This PDF remediation tool builds a tagged working copy from an untagged static PDF. Review the page preview beside its reading order before exporting.

Inspection shows any existing structure tree. Existing tagged documents are inspection-only here. Forms, annotations, attachments and rotated pages need a structure-preserving editor and cannot be exported with this tool.

Text extraction supplies starting paragraphs for each page. Correct missing text and separate headings before assigning tags. Image-only pages need a text equivalent entered manually or optical character recognition outside this tool.

W3C’s PDF reading-order technique explains why the tag sequence must follow the document’s meaning. A machine check cannot decide that sequence for you.

Remediate Supported Tags

Select a page, then edit its content items. Choose paragraph, a heading level, figure or simple table. Move items up or down to change that page’s reading order.

Every figure requires alternative text. Describe its information, including relevant values or trends. Decorative artwork stays outside the semantic layer.

For a simple table, paste tab-separated rows with column headers in the first row. The export creates Table, TR, TH and TD tags, with column scope on each header.

For example, paste a two-column table with “Account” and “Balance” as headers, then “Savings” and “125.00” as the next row. It exports one header row and one data row.

Merged cells, row headers, nested tables and complex header relationships are unsupported. Keep these structures in an editor that preserves their relationships. W3C’s PDF table technique describes the required relationships.

Export and Perform Manual Checks

The export preserves the page’s appearance as background artwork and adds your reviewed text and tags as a separate semantic layer. The original stays unchanged.

Download the tagged PDF and its JSON change report. The report retains the extracted starting text, edited items, language and unresolved checks. It can contain sensitive case information.

Open the exported copy in an independent PDF viewer and an assistive reader. Check heading navigation, the whole reading sequence, meaningful alternatives and table-cell navigation.

This tool supports a limited set of tagged-PDF structures. It does not certify PDF/UA or WCAG conformance. Fonts, visual contrast, interactive content and complex structures need separate assessment.

Before sharing the working copy, compare every page with the original and confirm that its semantic layer conveys all meaningful visible content.