The Document Accessibility Standards Landscape
PDF/UA, WCAG, ISO 32000-1, the Matterhorn Protocol and the Marrakesh Treaty are five different instruments doing five different jobs. Lesson 1 of the A11ytek ADS course, free to read.
What this covers, and why the exam cares
Every other lesson leans on this one. A document specialist works to several standards at once, and they are not alternatives to each other. They overlap, they were written by different bodies for different purposes, and a candidate who cannot say which one governs a given requirement will lose marks across all five domains.
There is also a version question to settle before anything else, because it looks like an error and is not.
A note on WCAG versions, read this first
The ADS Body of Knowledge references WCAG 2.1. A11ytek's WAS course teaches WCAG 2.2. Both are correct.
The reason is simple. IAAP writes exam items from the Body of Knowledge, and the current ADS edition predates 2.2. So this course cites 2.1 numbering, because that is what the exam was written against.
What 2.2 added, so you are not caught out elsewhere: nine new success criteria, of which six sit at A or AA, covering focus appearance, dragging movements, target size, consistent help, redundant entry and accessible authentication. It also removed 4.1.1 Parsing. None of the additions changes a document requirement you will be tested on here, but 2.5.8 Target Size does matter for interactive PDF forms in practice, and the removal of 4.1.1 is worth knowing because older document guidance still cites it.
Teach yourself 2.1 for the exam. Work to 2.2 for clients.
The five things you have to be able to tell apart
WCAG 2.1, from the W3C
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Written for web content, and applied to documents because documents are content delivered over the web and because every regulator has adopted it.
Structure: four principles, thirteen guidelines, success criteria at three levels. Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust, the POUR acronym the BoK asks for by name in section 4.1. Conformance target for almost every obligation you will meet is Level AA.
What WCAG does not do for you: it says nothing about how a PDF stores its structure. It says a relationship must be programmatically determinable; it does not say which tag.
Companion material matters more here than people expect. The W3C publishes PDF Techniques for WCAG, a numbered set (PDF1 through PDF23 and beyond) describing sufficient techniques for PDF specifically. The BoK cites individual ones repeatedly: PDF4 for hiding decorative images as artifacts, PDF7 for OCR, PDF13 for replacement text on links, PDF14 for running headers and footers, PDF18 for the document title. Learn the ones the BoK names. Techniques are informative, not normative, which means using one is sufficient and not using it is not automatically a failure.
PDF/UA, ISO 14289-1
The accessibility standard for PDF itself. UA is Universal Accessibility.
What it is for: WCAG tells you the outcome, PDF/UA tells you how a PDF file must be constructed to deliver it. Tags required, a logical structure tree required, artifacts distinguished from real content, no content outside the structure tree, metadata declaring conformance, and so on.
The relationship to WCAG is the examinable bit. They are complementary, not competing. A file can be PDF/UA conformant and still fail WCAG, because PDF/UA does not check whether your alternative text is accurate or whether your colour contrast is adequate. A file can pass a WCAG review and not be PDF/UA conformant, usually over technical requirements the reviewer never inspected. Serious document work targets both.
ISO 32000-1:2008
The PDF specification itself, PDF 1.7. Not an accessibility standard. It is the document that defines what a PDF is, and PDF/UA is a set of additional requirements layered on top of it.
Why the BoK asks for it in section 5.2: because tagged PDF is defined in ISO 32000-1, and an ADS advising an organisation on standards needs to be able to name the base specification rather than treating PDF as a proprietary Adobe format. It has not been proprietary since 2008.
The Matterhorn Protocol
Published by the PDF Association, currently version 1.02. Not a standard. It is the checkpoint list for testing PDF/UA conformance.
Structure: 31 checkpoints containing 136 failure conditions. Each failure condition is marked as machine-checkable, human-checkable, or both. That marking is the whole point of the document, and it is the best available answer to the question of what a tool can and cannot verify in a PDF.
The BoK cites specific checkpoints, for example 04-001 on colour and contrast and 14-003 on
headings, so recognise the numbering format. Matterhorn numbers look like NN-NNN and map to
PDF/UA clauses written as UA1:7.4-1.
EN 301 549
The European standard for accessibility requirements in ICT procurement. Contains WCAG 2.1 Level AA by reference and adds requirements of its own, including for non-web documents. If you work with European public sector clients this is the instrument that actually binds them, and Lesson 17 returns to it.
Two more instruments the BoK names
The Marrakesh Treaty, from the World Intellectual Property Organization. It creates copyright exceptions allowing accessible-format copies of published works to be made and shared across borders for people who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled, without the rights holder's permission.
Why a document specialist needs it: it is the legal basis for producing a Braille, large print, DAISY or accessible EPUB version of a work you do not own the rights to. When somebody asks whether they are allowed to remediate a purchased textbook for a student, this is the answer, subject to national implementation and the definition of an authorised entity.
EPUB Accessibility, from the organisation now part of the W3C. The accessibility specification for EPUB, which matters because EPUB is the second output format in the BoK after PDF, and because reflowable EPUB solves problems that fixed-layout PDF cannot.
National and regional law, briefly
You are not examined on statute in detail, but you should be able to place the main instruments.
United States. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, revised in 2017 to incorporate WCAG 2.0 Level AA by reference, governing federal procurement and federal agency content. The Americans with Disabilities Act covers public accommodations and employment, with document accessibility reached through both.
Canada. The Accessible Canada Act federally. Provincially, the AODA in Ontario, whose Information and Communications Standards apply WCAG to web content and whose alternate-format obligations apply directly to documents on request. Ontario also publishes accessibility policy and plan guidance the BoK cites as a model.
Europe. EN 301 549 via the Web Accessibility Directive and the European Accessibility Act.
United Kingdom. The Equality Act, with the public sector regulations applying WCAG 2.2 AA, and the Gov.UK sample accessible documents policy the BoK cites as a template.
The pattern worth remembering rather than the detail: almost every jurisdiction adopts WCAG by reference rather than writing its own technical rules. Which is why the standard matters more than the statute for your day-to-day work, and why a change in WCAG version propagates into law everywhere on a delay.
How the pieces fit, in one paragraph you could say out loud
WCAG sets the outcome for content in general and is what the law points at. The PDF Techniques tell you how to meet WCAG in a PDF specifically. PDF/UA, which is ISO 14289-1, sets the technical requirements for how an accessible PDF must be built on top of the base PDF specification, ISO 32000-1. The Matterhorn Protocol is how you test PDF/UA conformance, and it tells you which of those checks a machine can do. EPUB Accessibility does the equivalent job for EPUB. EN 301 549 is the procurement instrument in Europe and it points back at WCAG. The Marrakesh Treaty is what makes it lawful to produce an accessible copy of somebody else's work.
What an ADS is, according to the BoK
Worth reading back, because it sets the scope of everything that follows.
The credential is for professionals expected to be able to create accessible electronic documents, in authoring tools that are word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software or desktop publishing programs. It expects the ability to design, evaluate and remediate, plus the awareness needed to guide and consult others on process, workflow and policy.
Two sentences in the BoK are worth quoting to anyone who asks whether the exam is a software test. It says an ADS is expected to know and use the relevant remediation technologies rather than merely be aware of them. And it says knowledge of automated processes alone will not provide the background needed to pass.
So: four authoring tool families, two output formats, five domains, and a quarter of the exam about people and process rather than files.
The distinction candidates get wrong
WCAG and PDF/UA are not alternatives. Conformance to one does not imply the other.
Matterhorn is not a standard. It is the test protocol for a standard.
ISO 32000-1 is the PDF specification, not an accessibility standard.
Techniques are informative. Not using PDF4 is not itself a failure; failing to distinguish decorative content is.
The BoK cites WCAG 2.1. Answer exam questions in 2.1 terms.
PDF is an ISO standard, not an Adobe format, and saying so correctly is part of advising an organisation credibly.
Check yourself before the questions
- Name the four WCAG principles and the acronym the BoK uses for them.
- Explain, in two sentences, the difference in job between WCAG and PDF/UA.
- What is the ISO number for PDF/UA, and what is the ISO number for PDF itself?
- What does the Matterhorn Protocol add that PDF/UA does not provide?
- Which W3C PDF technique covers artifacts, and which covers OCR?
- What does the Marrakesh Treaty permit, and who does it permit it for?
- Why does this course cite WCAG 2.1 when the current version is 2.2?
Primary sources
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, and PDF Techniques for WCAG.
- ISO 14289-1, Document management applications: Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility (PDF/UA-1).
- ISO 32000-1:2008, Portable document format, Part 1: PDF 1.7.
- PDF Association, Matterhorn Protocol 1.02, PDF/UA in a Nutshell, and the Tagged PDF Best Practice Guide: Syntax.
- EN 301 549, current version.
- WIPO, Marrakesh Treaty.
The rest of the course
This is the first of 17 lessons. The full ADS course is included with an A11ytek Exam Prep ADS subscription, alongside the 2,500 verified ADS practice questions, spaced repetition and mock exams.
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This is lesson one of seventeen
The full ADS course runs to 40,310 words, written the same way as the lesson you have just read and mapped section by section to the official Body of Knowledge. It comes with the other sixteen ADS lessons and 2,500 practice questions, at no extra cost over the question bank itself.