PDF Accessibility
At Providence College, we recognize that it is vital to ensure that all of our web content is accessible to people using assistive technologies. We use DubBot to scan all web pages weekly, including all the PDFs linked on your site, and reports are sent to each web editor. Accessibility for PDFs is a bit more complex than for web pages, though, and requires more attention.
The official policy of Web Services is that we discourage the use of PDFs on our site. Most content that is published in PDF form lends itself well to being a web page, and should be a web page, not a PDF.
However, we recognize that sometimes, PDFs make the most sense for communication. But just as web pages do, PDFs require accessibility checking. You are responsible for making sure that any PDFs you upload to our website are accessible. Here are the resources you need to do that.
A note about the Spring 2026 PDF Accessibility Initiative:
If you received an email about PDFs on your website, you will have also received a CSV file, which can be opened in Excel. That will have direct links to PDFs stored in your WordPress Media Library, for you to review.
To use this spreadsheet:
- In the spreadsheet, note the PDF filename in the first column. (If you’re not sure what the PDF contains, click on the link to the PDF in the Direct Link column to open it directly to view it).
- Review the PDF, and decide if it should be deleted or remediated.
- To delete the file, search for the filename in your site’s Media Library, where you can delete it.
- To remediate the file, use the steps below.
- Check in DubBot if the PDF is actively linked to, and remove the link from any page that has such a link.
Not sure? We’re here to help!
Read it
As of 10 December 2025, DubBot scans not only your web pages, but your linked PDFs for accessibility. Take some time to read up on PDF accessibility, from our partners at DubBot:
- PDF Accessibility: The Basics
- Well-Tagged PDFs and What You Need to Know About Them
- An Accessible Interactive PDF Form
Within DubBot, you can find the link to your site’s PDFs directly below your Overall Site Score. You will see a list of all PDFs. If the document is untagged or inaccessible, those issues will be flagged in the Documents list.
Watch it
Everything you need to know to remediate a PDF, or create an accessible PDF to federal government accessibility standards can be found at Section508.gov’s subsite How to Test and Remediate PDFs for Accessibility Using Adobe Acrobat DC. If you do not have access to Adobe Acrobat, reach out to the Help Desk for assistance.
Do it
Are you ready to create your first accessible PDF? Providence College provides the tool Sensus Access to do basic automated PDF accessibility remediation. You upload the PDF to Sensus Access, and within minutes, a remediated version of your PDF is emailed back to you. IMPORTANT: You still must check the PDF to ensure that it is accessible. We recommend using Adobe Acrobat to do that, using the tools mentioned above.
When you receive your remediated PDF, you must do a final review:
- Open it in Adobe Acrobat
- From the left sidebar, choose:
- View more
- Prepare for Accessibility
- Check for Accessibility
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- Accept the default options, and then review any “Failed” and “Needs manual check” issues, and fix them before saving and distributing the PDF.
An example of a complex but accessible PDF.
If you have any questions about PDF accessibility, Web Services is here to help. Please reach out with any questions or concerns, any time!
