A tagged, accessible document

A document that says what each run of ink stands for, and which runs are only trimmings. Its text and its table describe themselves, a paragraph and a cell at a time. Validates as PDF/A-3a and PDF/UA-1.

Two things are drawn on every page: the content, and the trimmings. The content is marked and numbered, and a plan of the document points at those numbers in reading order, so software reading the document aloud reads it in the order it was written rather than the order it was drawn.

The trimmings — the running head, the page number — are marked as such, carry no number, and are invisible to anything following that plan. The page and the part of the plan describing it are built together, by one function, from one counter, which is what keeps the two from ever drifting apart. It validates as PDF/A-3a and PDF/UA-1.

What this example shows

  • A plan of the document in reading order, not in the order things were drawn.
  • Running heads and page numbers marked as trimmings.
  • Validated against PDF/A-3a and PDF/UA-1 by veraPDF.

The code, in full

The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.

The document itself

The same document is written in each of these languages. Open the one you want to look at.

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First page of A tagged, accessible document

What this document weighs

Before 116,151 bytes
Now 45,753 bytes
Saved 60.6 %

Not one mark on the page changed. See every document measured.

Examples near this one

A sheet that measures what it says

Three rules — centimetres, inches and points — on a page that states it must print at exactly the size it was drawn, and that the reader is to offer nothing else. That second request only exists from PDF 2.0 on, so the file declares 2.0 rather than changing version without you knowing.

A register whose every part says where it came from

Two sittings bound into one file. Each page carries a record of its own — what it is, whose hand wrote it, when — the photograph on the second page carries one too, and each transcription is tied to the page it transcribes rather than to the file at large. Tying an attached file to anything but the whole document only exists from PDF 2.0 on, so the file declares 2.0.

An archival sheet carrying fields of its own

A records office's reference, the department it came from, the date until which the document must be kept and its classification, in a PDF/A-3 file. No standard knows what a retention date is, so each field arrives with a description of itself — its type, who it is written for, what it means — which is what makes a checker accept information you invented. The page prints the same list, so what a person reads and what a machine reads cannot drift apart.

A tagged list whose column is a picture

A parts list whose first column is a picture rather than a word. Each picture is marked as one and carries the words a reader hears in its place, so nothing in the list is lost on somebody who cannot see it. Validates as PDF/A-3a and PDF/UA-1.

Every example, by subject

Glossary

PDF/A
A PDF made to be readable in twenty years' time. Everything it needs is inside the file — the fonts, the colours, the description of what it is — so nothing it depends on can go missing later. Public bodies and archives ask for it by name.
PDF/UA
A PDF a blind reader can use. The file says which text is a heading, which is a paragraph, and in what order a screen reader should say it all. Without that, a reading aid reads the page as it was drawn, which is rarely the order it should be read in.
veraPDF
A free program that checks whether a file really is what it claims to be, against the published rules. It is the tool archives use, so it is the one used here: a document is not called compliant because we say so, but because veraPDF passed it.
CMYK
The four inks a printing press lays down: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. A screen mixes light instead, so a document going to a press states its colours in inks, not in screen colours.