Knowledge
Accessible documents – the guide for public administration
No jungle of standards jargon: the topics you really need, in plain language.
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Law & standards
- BITV 2.0 for municipalities – what actually applies – Who is obliged, which law applies to federal, state and local government, which deadlines expired long ago – and which exemptions really exist.
- Norms & standards at a glance – who refers to whom? – EU directive, BGG, BITV, BFSG, EN 301 549, WCAG, PDF/UA: the tangle unravelled once and for all.
- WCAG 2.2 and EN 301 549 for PDF documents – How the WCAG success criteria apply to PDFs via chapter 10 of EN 301 549, which versions are authoritative – and what can and cannot be checked automatically.
- BFSG & European Accessibility Act: what has applied to businesses since June 2025 – Which products and services the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) covers, which transition periods apply, who is exempt – and when PDFs are affected.
- Complaint, conciliation, lawsuit: the risk in practice – What actually happens when someone reports a barrier – step by step through the procedure.
- The BITV test – and how to pass it – What lies behind the official testing procedure, how monitoring bodies proceed and how to prepare.
- Tendering for accessible PDFs: wording the requirements in the specification correctly – Whether it is typesetting the official gazette, an expert report or specialist administrative software: which requirements for accessible PDFs belong in the specification, how proof and acceptance work – and which wording you are better off leaving out.
- PDF/UA-1 or PDF/UA-2? What public bodies should require today – Two parts of one standard, two PDF versions: how PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2 differ, how far tools and assistive technologies have come – and which requirement makes sense today for your own documents and for tenders.
Practice
- PDF/UA explained in plain language – What lies behind PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2, tags and the Matterhorn Protocol – and why a PDF that looks perfect can still be unreadable.
- Making a PDF accessible – step by step – Re-export or repair? The route to a verified PDF – for existing documents too, with an honest distinction between what automation does and what needs manual work.
- Accessible PDFs from Word – the 10-point guide – 90 % of accessibility is made (or lost) in the source document. These ten simple steps make the difference.
- Test it yourself: 5 quick checks without specialist knowledge – With a keyboard, a free screen reader and two simple tricks, you can find the worst barriers yourself in 15 minutes.
- The accessibility statement – in 30 minutes – Mandatory content, wording aids and the mistakes that stand out immediately during monitoring.
- The 10 most common PAC errors – explained – What “Tagged content missing” and the like really mean, who they exclude and what can be fixed automatically.
- PAC and veraPDF: why checking tools show different results – One PDF, two checking tools, two results: what veraPDF and PAC each check, where the differences come from, how to assess them – and why neither of them replaces testing by people.
- AI and accessible documents: what it can do, what it cannot – and what public bodies should watch out for – Alt text, structure recognition, character mapping: where AI really helps with accessible PDFs, where it must not be the one to decide, what data protection and labelling mean – and how DokAudit uses it.
Use cases
- Publishing official gazettes and municipal newsletters accessibly – Multi-column layout, photos, adverts, ePaper: what matters for an official gazette as a PDF – and how the administration, publisher and printer divide the work so that every issue appears in accessible form.
- Providing accessible meeting documents from the council information system – Reports, minutes and attachments: why the attachments in particular are the problem, how many documents per meeting cycle can be prepared automatically, and when a connection via API is worthwhile.
- Making budgets and large tables in PDFs accessible – Header cells, Scope and Headers, tables spanning many pages, number formats – and how to tell that a table is not really a table at all.
- Accessible PDF forms: fields, labels, tab order – What a fillable PDF form needs for screen readers and keyboard users – from tooltips and boxed fields such as the IBAN to required fields and error messages. And what can be solved automatically.
- Scanned archive documents: what OCR achieves – and where its limits are – How a scan becomes a readable PDF, why text recognition alone is not enough, where handwriting and poor originals set limits – and when creating the document anew is the better choice.
- Writing good alt text – with and without AI – Function rather than image description, charts, photos with captions, logos and decoration: how to find the right alt text for every image in a PDF – and why AI suggestions always need a review by someone who knows the subject.
- Keeping your website's PDFs under control for good – Taking stock with a website scan, setting priorities by downloads, currency and legal obligation, ongoing monitoring – and the question of what to replace, delete or archive.
- Colour contrast in PDFs: what WCAG 1.4.3 requires and how to measure it properly – 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text: what the contrast requirement means in a PDF, when logos and decoration are exempt, why text in artefacts is a special case – and how to measure reliably.