Unicode

Unicode is the universal standard that gives every character in every writing system its own number, so that software can agree on what a piece of text says.

It is the reason text can move between programs, languages, and devices without turning into nonsense. Accessibility depends on it directly: a screen reader speaks Unicode characters, so text can only be read aloud, searched, or copied once the software can tell which Unicode character each glyph on the page represents. In a PDF that connection has to be recorded in the file; where it is absent, the words are visible but not machine readable.

Learn more

• The Unicode Standard - published by the Unicode Consortium
• Glyph
• Machine-readable text