Readable PDF text

Silktide tests whether the text in your PDF documents exists as real text, rather than only as pictures of text. A scanned page looks identical to a typed one, but software can only read the typed one.

Why this matters

When a PDF contains no , a has nothing to announce - the entire document is silent for people who are blind or have low vision. Nobody can select, copy, or search the text, search engines cannot index the content, and translation tools cannot process it.

This most often happens with scanned paper documents saved straight to PDF, and with design tools that flatten text into images on export. These documents are common in exactly the places they do the most harm: forms, policies, and archived records.

How to fix it

Export the PDF from the original digital document - a word processor or layout tool - instead of scanning a printout. This preserves real text.
For documents that only exist on paper, scan them and then run , which most PDF tools include. Proofread the recognized text, as OCR makes mistakes.
For important content, consider publishing a web page instead of (or alongside) the PDF - HTML pages are easier to keep accessible.

Making the text readable is the first step; a fully accessible document also needs structure. See PDF remediation for how Silktide can repair documents for you.

How Silktide tests this

Analyze each PDF document found on your website.
Extract whatever real text the document contains.
Report the document when no readable words can be extracted, meaning its content exists only as images.

Each document passes or fails as a whole.

Troubleshooting

I can read the PDF fine

Your eyes read the picture of the text; software cannot. To see what a machine sees, try selecting a sentence in the PDF or searching for a word you can see on the page. If you cannot select or find it, the text is an image.

The document is mostly images by design

A photo album or poster may legitimately contain little text. If the document conveys nothing through pictured text, you can the finding.