In our digital-first world, we create and send millions of documents—statements, invoices, policies, and notifications. But are they truly reaching everyone? For millions of people who use assistive technologies like screen readers, a standard PDF can be a frustrating, unreadable barrier.
Digital accessibility is no longer a niche concern; it's a cornerstone of good customer experience and a critical component of legal and social compliance. The challenge, however, is immense. How can an organization that generates thousands or millions of documents a day ensure every single one is accessible? Manually fixing each PDF is simply not an option. This is the problem that DocBridge® Accessibility Designer is built to solve.
To a screen reader, a typical PDF is just a collection of text and images on a page. It doesn't inherently understand the structure. It can't distinguish a headline from a paragraph, identify a table, or know the correct reading order of columns.
To make a PDF accessible, it needs to be a "Tagged PDF". Think of tags as a hidden, logical map layered onto the document. This map tells assistive technology:
Creating these tags for millions of documents seems like an impossible task.
Instead of manually fixing individual PDFs one by one, DocBridge Accessibility Designer allows you to create a reusable template that defines the accessibility rules for an entire class of documents.
The output of the Accessibility® Designer is not a single accessible PDF. It's a powerful, reusable asset called a Document Tagging Template (DTT). This file contains all the instructions needed to correctly and automatically tag any document that shares the same layout.
Automated PDF/UA Tagging - e.g. for Documents in the Archive:
Learn how to automatically tag existing PDFs and convert them into 100% legally compliant PDF/UA files.
The workflow shifts the focus from tedious remediation to intelligent, reusable design.
1. Start with a Representative PDF: An analyst or designer opens a sample document – like a typical invoice or statement – in the Accessibility Designer interface.
2. Define the Structure and Reading Order: The user identifies the document's semantic structure. He can draw boxes around sections and tag them as headings, lists, and tables. He defines the logical reading order, which may be different from the visual layout on the page. This ensures that someone listening to the document gets the information in a coherent sequence.
3. Create and Save the Tagging Template (DTT): The result of this work is saved as a DTT file. This file is now a managed resource.
4. Apply at Scale in Production: This single DTT file can then be used in an automated production workflow to tag thousands of similar documents correctly and consistently.
Graphic shows: “Tagged” content elements in the document via marking and optimization of the reading order in the Accessibility Designer of the DocBridge® Communication Suite.
To further streamline the process, DocBridge® Accessibility Designer integrates a powerful AI Assistant directly into the user interface. For users, this provides two major advantages:
This "design once, apply many times" model is the only feasible way to achieve accessibility at an enterprise scale.
