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PDF/UA conformance

Silktide reports any remaining accessibility conformance problem a PDF has that no other document check covers. The other checks each examine one familiar concern, such as tagging, tables, or fonts; this one catches everything else the standard requires, so nothing found in a document goes unreported.

The standard is , and it is a large one. Its requirements are tested through the , which turns the standard into 136 specific conditions covering constructs most documents never use: article threads, optional content layers, embedded attachments, and more.

Why this matters

This check exists so that a finding is never silently dropped. Most documents fail the standard in the same handful of ways, which is why those have checks of their own, but the long tail is real, and a document that trips one of the rarer requirements still fails conformance. Without a catch-all, such a document would be reported as having nothing wrong while a validator disagreed, and that gap is worse than any single requirement it might hide.

It also means Silktide's answer stays complete as the standard's testing improves. When a new requirement becomes machine-testable, findings against it appear here immediately rather than waiting for a check to be written for them.

Because it covers many different requirements, the urgency varies with what it found. Read the finding on the document itself, which names the specific requirement and what to do about it, rather than treating everything reported here as equally important.

How to fix it

  1. Open the document and read the finding. Each one names the requirement involved and what to change. The document's Review tab is where the detail lives.
  2. Re-export from the source with PDF/UA output enabled, which resolves most of the long tail without you needing to know which requirement was involved. Modern export paths avoid the unusual constructs that cause these findings in the first place.
  3. Or run Silktide remediation, which rebuilds the document against the standard. See How PDF remediation works.
  4. Consider whether the construct is needed at all. Several of these requirements concern legacy features - article threads, layered optional content, embedded attachments - that are rarely deliberate in an ordinary document. Removing an unnecessary construct is easier than making it conformant.

How Silktide tests this

  1. Find the PDF documents linked from your website, and analyze each unique file once however many pages link to it.
  2. Compare the document against the standard's testable conditions.
  3. Set aside every finding that one of the specific document checks already covers.
  4. Report the document when anything remains, once per document however many findings there are.

Because this check reports whatever is left over, it never duplicates another check. A document failing only on tagging is reported by PDF tagging alone.

Troubleshooting

What exactly was found?

Open the document to see it. This check reports that the document has a conformance problem outside the specific checks; the document itself names the requirement, explains it, and says how to fix it.

Nothing is reported here, so is the document conformant?

It means nothing was found beyond what the other checks cover, so read them together. It is also worth knowing that no tool tests the whole standard mechanically: 87 of the 136 conditions are machine-testable and the rest need judgment, which Silktide applies through AI review. PDF standards coverage sets out exactly how much is covered and how.

The document meets WCAG but fails this

That is possible in both directions, and it is expected rather than contradictory. PDF/UA requires internal file properties that no WCAG criterion mentions, and WCAG requires things PDF/UA leaves out, text contrast most notably. Silktide grades the two standards separately so that neither verdict is diluted by the other. See Understanding PDF accessibility.

Learn more

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