How to Batch Process PDFs for ADA Compliance (Without Doing It One File at a Time)

Paul Rayius
VP of Strategic Accessibility | Customer Success & Training

ON THIS PAGE

• 1. Run a Single Action to Fix a Single Issue
• 2. Run Sequences of Actions to Fix Multiple Issues at Once
• 3. What If PDFix Doesn’t Have the Action Sequence I Need?
• 4. But Wait, My Documents Aren’t Even Tagged
• FAQ

Document accessibility requires some manual labor. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that in this article. That said, the manual labor can be done at various stages in the document “lifecycle.”

If you design your content with accessibility in mind, using styles correctly, providing Alt text for relevant images, and creating lists and tables appropriately in the source file, for example, you’re doing that “manual labor,” but you’re doing it proactively. And you end up saving yourself time (and pain) in the long run.

Furthermore, when it comes to testing for accessibility, the Matterhorn Protocol will tell you there are some checks that can be done by a “machine,” but some checks have to be done by a human.

With the above taken into consideration, let’s consider this scenario: You have a whole bunch of PDFs that have already been created (with or without accessibility in mind, you may not even have access to the source file, etc.), you’ve tested them with a trustworthy validator, and they all come up as failing.

NOT A HUGE SHOCK, RIGHT?

Many people and organizations have been (or are currently) there! Upon further inspection, though, you find that a lot, or even all, of the PDFs have the same issues. That’s some manual labor, to figure out what the issues are, sure. And now you have to fix them.

When it comes to fixing the issues in PDFs, most “solutions” make you do the work one document at a time. Phew! Talk about manual labor! Sure, some of those tools might have individual functions that you can use to fix individual issues wherever they occur in a document. That’s better than nothing, I suppose. But you’re still fixing one issue at a time and in only one document at a time.

Unless you’re using PDFix! Like those other tools, PDFix will allow you to fix the issues in your documents one at a time. Sure, that functionality is there. But who has time for that!? Not you!

In addition to being able to go one issue, and one document, at a time, PDFix allows you to fix multiple issues, in batches of documents, all at once! You have options on how to do this, too. I’ll break things down for you.

❶ Run a Single Action to Fix a Single Issue

Right out of the box, PDFix comes “pre-loaded” with actions that can be run. For example, if your documents have titles in the metadata, but they aren’t set to display that title when opened, PDFix has an action to automatically set all of the documents to display their title. Select the files. Run the action. Problem solved.

Wait. The document doesn’t have a title in the metadata? No worries, there’s an action to set the title too. You even have options on how to do this! You can choose to use the file name, the text in the first H1 (or some other tag), or provide a custom title, if you want!

You can also embed fonts in all of the documents and automatically fix Unicode issues. Heck, you can even automatically provide Alt text for Figure tags. (And, as with setting the title, there are options, here, too – including whether or not to use AI to generate Alt text!)

❷ Run Sequences of Actions to Fix Multiple Issues at Once

Not only does PDFix come with those “pre-loaded” actions, but it also comes with pre-loaded sequences of actions that, again, can be run on multiple documents at a time! Using my examples above, are your documents missing their titles, are not set to display their titles, need fonts embedded, need Alt text on their Figure tags (and I could go on and on, mind you)? No worries! There are sequences of actions in PDF that will do multiple things all at once! In fact, here is a link to our Batch Actions Presets on GitHub where you can see a few of these action sequences and what they do!

37 ACTIONS, ONE CLICK

The “Make Accessible” sequence of actions, for example, will do about 37 individual actions or steps! Talk about addressing multiple issues all at the same time! And, again, this can be run against multiple documents at once!

❸ What If PDFix Doesn’t Come With the Action Sequence I Need?

Ok, you’ve gotten into the thick of it, you’re remediating your documents, and you find that “Make Accessible,” or some of the other “pre-loaded” action sequences, don’t have all of the steps that you need. What now? Make your own sequence of actions!

PDFix is super flexible and it gives you the control you need to solve your problems. So, if one of the pre-built actions isn’t doing it for you, you can either edit them as needed, or you can simply create your own!

For example, I have a custom action I made to “Fix links.” With one click of a button, I can make sure link annotations are tagged, I can assign them their Contents entry, I can provide Alt text for the Link tags that the link annotations are in, and I can set the Tab Order for the pages that have annotations.

Furthermore, because not all link annotations are created equally, I can assign the Contents, and the Alt text for the Link tags, first using the BBox for the link annotation, for example, and, if that doesn’t “work,” I can then automatically use the link destination. And, yes, that’s all in the same step! I don’t even have to tweak the action and run it again. Just one time gets the job done.

Do you want to hear something else that’s super awesome?

Let’s say you work with a team of people and all of you would benefit from the custom action that you’ve made. No problem! Export it from you PDFix and share it with them. It’s a simple JSON file that can be easily imported. So, yeah, coworkers can share custom actions and you can all be more efficient!

Furthermore, do you use – or are you considering using – the SDK? Custom actions, edited sequences of actions, etc., can all be exported from PDFix Desktop and used in the SDK!