Whether you’re building a web service, integrating into a content pipeline, or running batch remediation, PDFix helps you scale accessibility with just a few lines of code.
The PDFix Auto-Tag API automatically detects and tags headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and figures in unstructured PDFs—turning them into accessible, compliant documents. Use it to automate PDF remediation and streamline PDF/UA and WCAG compliance.
Why PDF Accessibility Still Matters
Nearly 90% of PDFs remain inaccessible to users with disabilities. The same fixed layout that ensures document fidelity often makes accessibility difficult, especially for screen readers and assistive technologies. Tags – structural elements that define a document’s reading order and logical flow – are the key to solving this.
PDFix helps organizations address this challenge through advanced layout recognition, AI-powered tagging, and PDFix SDK that automate what used to be slow, manual work.
Meet the PDFix Auto-Tag API – Built on the PDFix SDK
Tags describe how content should be read. Without them, assistive technologies can’t interpret a document correctly. Our SDK automatically analyzes unstructured PDFs and generates a complete logical tag tree.
It detects:
- Headings and paragraphs
- Lists and complex tables, forms
- Sections, figures, and nested elements
This ensures that your PDFs are both machine-readable and human-accessible.
Automate PDF Accessibility and Validation
With the PDFix SDK, you can choose from four flexible approaches to auto-tag PDFs depending on your workflow, volume, and precision needs.
| Approach | Description | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Without a Layout Template | Performs a baseline auto-tagging pass across large or mixed batches of PDFs – ideal for quick accessibility remediation. | High-volume document processing |
| Auto-Generated Layout Template (Preflight) | Generates and applies a layout template automatically during preflight analysis to improve tagging accuracy. | Complex documents with variable structure |
| AI-Generated Layout Template | Uses AI and machine learning models to intelligently detect layout patterns and adaptive tagging logic. | Dynamic or non-standard layouts |
| Pre-Created Layout Template | Reuses predefined templates to ensure consistent tag structures across recurring or print-ready documents. | Repetitive documents (invoices, bank statements, reports, catalogs) |
📘 See our full step-by-step tutorial: Auto-Tagging PDFs with PDFix SDK
Expanding AI-Powered Automation
PDFix continuously enhances automation by integrating Docker-based AI models for advanced remediation tasks, including:
- AI-generated alternative text for images
- Automatic language detection
- Automatic table summary generation for tables in PDFs
- VeraPDF Validation with generated validation report
- and much more!
Explore all available AI-powered external actions on the PDFix Marketplace ›
Validate for PDF/UA and WCAG Compliance
Once tagging is complete, run the built-in PDF/UA Validator powered by veraPDF – the industry-supported, open-source engine for checking PDF/UA and WCAG requirements. It highlights structural issues, fixes machine-detectable errors automatically, and generates detailed compliance reports for QA and audit purposes.
Extend Automation with PDFix Accessibility Actions
Boost your accessibility workflow with PDFix Accessibility Actions — ready-to-use commands in the PDFix SDK that automate tagging, reading order, and structure validation. These JSON-based or command-line actions simplify large-scale PDF remediation, ensuring consistent PDF/UA compliance. Combine them with AI-powered Auto-Tagging and the built-in Validator to create a fully automated, reliable accessibility pipeline.
Smooth Conversion to Responsive HTML
Well-tagged PDFs are far easier to repurpose for the web. The PDF to HTML conversion in the PDFix SDK transforms any PDF into responsive, mobile-ready HTML.
💡New In: Convert HTML Pages to PDF/UA via Docker
Developers can now use our external action – a Docker image that converts HTML to PDF/UA-compliant files, powered by PDFix SDK and Google Headless Chrome.
Explore the full PDFix Marketplace for additional AI-powered external actions and integrations.
Build Accessibility Automation Directly into Your Product
Integrate automated tagging and PDF/UA validation directly into your application or document workflow – starting from the document creation stage. With the PDFix SDK and layout templates, you can generate a complete accessibility pipeline that automatically detects structure, applies tags, validates compliance, and exports ready-to-use accessible PDFs.
This approach has already been successfully implemented in enterprise environments such as Deutsche Bank, proving that accessibility and automation can coexist seamlessly at scale. To learn more, read our project poster Unlocking PDF Accessibility at Scale for Business Enterprises
If you’re building your own accessibility solution, get in touch – we specialize in custom SDK integrations, workflow automation, and enterprise-level accessibility compliance.
