Diana Kosovacova
Digital Marketing Lead & PDF Accessibility Evangelist
PDFix auto-tags PDFs for accessibility by combining Amazon Textract with the PDFix: each page is rendered as an image, analyzed by Textract’s AI, and converted into a single JSON layout template that drives automated, PDF/UA- and WCAG-compliant tagging – even for scanned or image-based PDFs.
Why Choose AI for PDF Auto-Tagging?
Manual tagging is slow, expensive, and error-prone. AI-powered auto-tagging with PDFix solves this by:
- Automatically detecting structure → headings, tables, and forms
- Generating reusable JSON templates → reuse across thousands of documents
- Ensuring PDF/UA compliance at scale → meet PDF/UA & WCAG and legal requirements effortlessly
How Does the Amazon Textract + PDFix Workflow Work?
The process begins with rendering each PDF page as an image.
These images are then sent securely to Amazon Textract servers, where the AI analyzes them and returns detailed information about the individual elements on each page – such as text blocks, tables, and forms. PDFix then transforms this data into a layout template (JSON format) that the PDFix SDK can work with. Using this template, the original PDF is automatically and accurately tagged for accessibility.
More Options for AI-Powered Auto-Tagging
With PDFix you now have more approaches to auto-tagging:
- PDFix Auto-Tagging Engine – powerful built-in logic for PDF auto-tagging
- PDFix + Amazon Textract model
- PDFix + PaddlePaddle model
Integrate PDFix with AI models and choose the layout recognition that fits your documents best. Compare results and pick the most accurate auto-tagging for your use case and industry.
💡TIP: Explore how different auto-tagging methods in PDFix Desktop work together with AI to handle even the most complex document layouts.
Build Smarter AI-Powered Workflows
This integration shows how external AI models like Textract can power accessibility tagging with PDFix. If your organization uses a different AI engine, we can integrate it into your custom remediation workflow. More AI models including olmOCR and others are coming soon via the PDFix Marketplace.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Amazon Textract integration work on scanned or image-based PDFs?
Yes. Each page is first rendered as an image before Textract analyzes it, so the workflow handles scanned and image-based documents the same way it handles native PDFs.
Is my document data secure when using Amazon Textract?
Page images are sent to Amazon Textract’s cloud servers for analysis, so this workflow relies on AWS’s security and compliance posture rather than running fully offline. If 100% local processing is a requirement, PDFix’s Docling AI integration is the local alternative.
Can I reuse the JSON layout template across multiple documents?
Yes. Once PDFix generates a JSON template from Textract’s output, it can be reused across similar documents, which is what makes batch tagging thousands of files practical.
How does Amazon Textract compare to PDFix’s built-in auto-tagging engine or PaddlePaddle?
All three are valid paths in PDFix — the built-in engine needs no external service, Textract is a strong cloud-based OCR option for complex forms and tables, and PaddlePaddle is a multilingual, open alternative. Which one fits best depends on your document types and whether cloud processing is acceptable for your workflow.
Try PDFix Desktop free
Full-featured, no sign-up, no credit card – batch validate & fix your PDFs for PDF/UA compliance.
Saved files include a watermark in the free version.
