How to make a PDF accessible — step by step (2026)
Make a PDF accessible — step-by-step instructions for Word and InDesign, plus tagging, reading order, alt text, forms, and tables. The 2026 PDF accessibility playbook.
Articles in
accessibility
procurement
Anatomy of an accessibility-aware RFP: real procurement language teardown
Five anonymised RFP accessibility sections, clause by clause — federal, US state, EU member-state, Fortune 500, and the typical boilerplate.
sre
Accessibility incidents belong in the SRE postmortem
A working argument that accessibility regressions are SRE-grade incidents — observable, severity-tier-able, and reportable into PagerDuty/Opsgenie/Statuspage.
data-viz
Accessible data-visualisation tooling in 2026: a working stack
An engineering primer scoring Vega-Lite, Plotly, Observable Plot, Apache ECharts, and D3 against accessibility defaults — SVG/ARIA, colour-blind palettes, keyboard-navigable data points, screen-reader hierarchy, and alternative table view — with concrete picks by use case.
Accessible PDFs end-to-end: from authoring to remediation
A practical engineering primer on producing accessible PDFs — authoring choices in InDesign, Word and LibreOffice, the tag tree that PDF/UA actually requires, the four remediation tools engineers reach for, and how JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver and ChromeVox each handle a tagged PDF differently.
presentations
Accessible presentations: PowerPoint, Keynote, and the web-first alternative
A production primer for shipping accessible slide decks. PowerPoint's Accessibility Checker, Keynote's thinner toolkit, Google Slides' 2024 catch-up, and the web-first Reveal.js / Slidev / Marp route — with a decision tree for picking the right tool for the talk.
stem-diagrams
Accessible STEM diagrams: SVG, ARIA-described content, audio descriptions
Chemistry molecules, biology cell structures, physics force diagrams, math function graphs — the production playbook for STEM imagery that screen readers, refreshable braille, and audio-description streams can actually consume.
ar
AR/VR accessibility: where the WebXR + ARIA-mixed-reality story actually is
A 2026 primer on the state of accessibility inside Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and the WebXR specification. What works, what is still vapor, and why most developers should not be shipping browser-based XR experiences to disabled users yet.
ats
Applicant tracking systems are an accessibility crisis: an audit of the top 10 ATS platforms
We ran an axe-based automated audit plus a manual keyboard and screen-reader review across the candidate-facing flows of the ten most-used applicant tracking systems — Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Taleo, iCIMS, Greenhouse, Lever, BambooHR, Workable, JazzHR, and SmartRecruiters.
civic-tech
Civic tech and digital benefits: how unemployment portals fail disabled claimants
An audit of unemployment, SNAP, Medicaid, and SSDI portals in the ten largest US states + Login.gov and SSA.gov against WCAG 2.1 AA and the April 2024 DOJ Title II final rule.
figma
The designer-to-engineer handoff fails accessibility: a study of 50 Figma files
We audited 50 production Figma files — anonymised, with permission — for the accessibility specs that did and did not make it into the handoff.
epub3
EPUB3 for accessible publishing: what publishers need to ship
EPUB3.3 is the format publishers will be measured against under the European Accessibility Act.
eu-ai-act
EU AI Act Articles 16 + 73: where the high-risk AI rules intersect with disability law
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — the EU AI Act — entered general application on 2 August 2026. A primer on how Article 16 (general-purpose AI obligations) and Article 73 (high-risk AI requirements) intersect with disability law in employment, education, and essential services.
games
Game accessibility 2026: the post-CVAA video-game extension and where AAA studios stand
A decade after the FCC's 2013 video-game waiver expired and twelve years into the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act's reach over in-game communications, the AAA console business has been pulled — unevenly, sometimes reluctantly.
mobility
Mobility apps and disabled riders: an audit of Uber, Lyft, Bolt, FreeNow, and DiDi
Five major ride-hail apps audited on screen-reader behaviour, wheelchair-accessible-vehicle (WAV) supply, service-animal handling, and the regulatory follow-on from the 2021 DOJ-Uber settlement and the EAA's Article 4.
news-publishers
News publishers and accessibility: the worst-in-class digital sector
News publishers post the lowest accessibility pass rate of any consumer-facing digital sector. We audited ten major newsrooms — NYT, Post, WSJ, CNN, BBC, Guardian, Reuters, Bloomberg, Axios, Politico — across articles, video captions, paywalls, mobile apps, and archives.
patient-portals
Patient portals fail disabled patients: an audit of the top 8 US EHR-linked portals
Eight major US patient-portal brands — Epic MyChart, Oracle Health, Allscripts, athenahealth, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, Practice Fusion, Greenway — audited against WCAG 2.1 AA and the HHS Section 504 May 2024 final rule.
profile
Profile: the designer who shipped accessibility to a 200-million-user product
A composite profile of a senior product designer who led the accessibility transformation of a consumer product used by approximately 200 million people.