ISO 14289 (PDF/UA)

The accessibility of an electronic document is dependent on the inclusion of a variety of semantic information such as (but not limited to) machine-recoverable text presented in a declared language, logical structure of content, and organization of that content in pages, sections and paragraphs.

The primary purpose of ISO 14289 (known as PDF/UA) is to define a specific use of the structure and tagged PDF features in PDF 1.7, which provide a mechanism for reuse of PDF page content, especially in the accessibility context.

For PDF/UA conforming files to be truly accessible there must be PDF readers and AT (assistive technology) which understand tagged PDF files. These requirements are also stipulated in the standard.

ISO 14289-1:2012

The original PDF/UA specification published in 2012 is no longer available.

ISO 14289-1:2014

This “dated revision” includes a variety of corrections.

ISO TC 171 SC 2 WG 9 is presently at work on PDF/UA-2.