Digital Accessibility Testing & Remediation Tools

At UVM, .pdfs must meet the PDF/UA-1 accessibility standards. In order to make sure that you are creating and sharing accessible .pdfs, you need to test the .pdf, and then, if necessary, you need to remediate, or fix, any accessibility issues with the .pdf.

Testing a PDF for Accessibility

UVM recommends either:

• Adobe Acrobat Pro, or
• Foxit Editor Pro, or
• the PDF Accessibility Checker.

If you get conflicting results from .pdf checkers or need to verify a .pdf checker, please reconcile your results against PAC. PAC is the tool federal auditing agencies use, so it is the tool whose results UVM will default to in questions surrounding accessibility. Please do not depend on online .pdf accessibility checkers that are not on this list. 

Canva, in particular, produces false negatives for .pdf accessibility.

Remediating Simple PDFs

Please note: no software is capable of fully remediating .pdf documents without manual human involvement. Automated remediation tools currently are able to address roughly 30-40% of the full accessibility issues present in many .pdf documents (Sources: Accessibility Tool Audit (Gov.uk 2018), Web Accessibility Testing: What Can Be Tested and How (Groves 2025)).

At a minimum, a human user is needed to confirm that the .pdf passes color contrast, has headings in appropriate places, includes good quality alt-text for images, is navigable with a keyboard-only, and has an appropriate reading order.

For remediating simple .pdfs, UVM recommends either:

• Adobe Acrobat Pro, or
• PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC).

Acrobat is available with your UVM netid on the computers in the Howe Library Media Lab. PAC is downloadable for free. Foxit is available for LCOM personnel. Yuja Panorama can be used to remediate .pdf issues in Brightspace.

All questions in regards to whether a .pdf conforms to full accessibility standards will be reconciled against the results of a scan using PAC plus a manual accessibility audit.

You will always have a much easier time remediating a .pdf if you are able to fix errors in the source document before (re)exporting the results to a .pdf, regardless of which software you use for remediation.

Equations are a particular difficulty for assistive technology to understand correctly. They are made more difficult by the fact that the same equation can mean different things based on which branch of STEM the equation is currently being used in. 

Inserting Accessible Equations in Documents

UVM recommends the MathType Equation Editor extension for Microsoft Word. This extension will allow you to type equations directly into a Word or OneNote document, and the equation will be saved as MathML. 

Making Hand-written Equations Accessible

UVM recommends the MathPix Editor for scanning hand-written documents into accessible digital formats. The MathPix Editor will allow you to take a photo of your document on mobile, or upload your document on desktop. It will then render your handwriting into natural language selectable text. It will render any equations as LaTeX, and allow you to edit those equations in LaTeX, as well.

Please note: OAS is aware that MathPix’ automated scanner for hand-written notes produces LaTeX equations that cannot be relied upon to be correct, and should be assumed to need manual editing. OAS is working with The LaTeX Project and the Daisy Math A11y group (authors of MathCAT) to examine different solutions, as well as evaluating Yuja Panorama's capabilities in this area. OAS would love to hear from any faculty who are interested in pursuing this particular branch of digital accessibility research. 

Weak or inadequate contrast between text on a page or screen, and its background is one of the two most common accessibility errors on the internet. To ensure that your text has adequate color contrast to meet the WCAG accessibility standards, you need to measure it. 

UVM recommends either:

• The TPGi / Vispero Colour Contrast Analyser (free to download and install on Mac or Windows machines) or
• WebAIM WAVE Contrast Checker (browser-based)

UVM does not recommend the color contrast tool in Microsoft, Adobe, or Canva. Do not depend on any of those tools to give you accurate readings.

Color Contrast and the UVM Color Palette

Not all colors in the UVM color palette can be put together to create accessible results. OAS has created a quick reference guide for communications professionals as to which colors can be used together in regular text sizes, which colors can only be used together in large text sizes, and which colors cannot be used together. 

• Download the Color Contrast worksheet (.pdf)

To measure a website's accessibility, UVM recommends the following tools:

• WebAIM WAVE Accessibility Checker
• SiteImprove

Additionally, OAS also uses an extensive Manual Website Accessibility Auditing Workbook that is based on industry-standard website accessibility auditing and the WCAG Success Criteria. Training on how departments can use the Manual Website Accessibility Auditing Workbook will be available in Spring 2027. 

Conformance measurements obtained through using tools not on the above list cannot be accepted as valid proof of accessibility conformance.

Users who maintain a website on UVM's Drupal cluster should focus on analyzing the accessibility of their content. To find out more about how using UVM's Drupal cluster can ensure a website meets a majority of accessibility standards, please read Working With the WCAG Guidelines. Please note that while the Editoria11y tool included with Drupal can provide some hints on potential accessibility issues, it cannot be used as a reliable guide to the accessibility conformance of a webpage or website.

All questions in regards to whether a webpage or website conforms to full accessibility standards will be reconciled against the results of a scan using the WebAIM WAVE Accessibility Checker plus a manual accessibility audit from OAS.