Most organisations do not have one inaccessible PDF; they have hundreds. Course materials, forms, annual reports, policies, leaflets. Trying to fix everything at once is expensive and slow. A little preparation turns that pile into a batch with clear priorities and a predictable price.
1. Make an inventory
List every document with its title, page count, where it is published and when it was last updated. A simple spreadsheet is enough. You will quickly see that some documents are obsolete and can be removed rather than remediated — the cheapest fix of all.
2. Set priorities
Remediate first what people need to use your services: application forms, course syllabi, health or safety information, documents linked from your main pages, and anything requested by a user. Archive material that nobody downloads can wait or be offered on request.
3. Find the source files
If a PDF was exported from Word or InDesign, the original file is valuable. Fixing headings and alt text in the source and exporting again often gives a cleaner result, and it means the next edition will be accessible from the start. Send sources whenever you have them, even if you also send the PDF.
4. Flag scanned and complex documents
Scanned pages are images of text. They need OCR and careful proofreading before any tagging can begin, so they take much longer and are priced separately. Also flag fillable forms, documents with complex tables (merged cells, multi-level headers) and anything with mathematical content.
5. Choose your target standard
- PDF/UA (ISO 14289) — the technical standard for accessible PDF.
- WCAG 2.1 or 2.2, level AA — the reference for web content, applied to documents.
- Section 508 — required by US federal agencies and many contractors.
- EN 301 549 — the European standard behind public-sector accessibility rules.
If you are unsure, PDF/UA plus WCAG 2.2 AA covers the requirements of the others for documents.
6. Prepare descriptions for specialised images
We write alternative text for photos and standard charts. But if a diagram shows a clinical procedure, an engineering detail or a research result, the person who knows the content should confirm what it must say. A short note per image saves a round of questions.
7. Count the pages
Remediation is priced by page because every page has to be tagged and checked. Add up all the pages in your batch, including covers and blank pages. Our remediation batches start at $390 for up to 50 pages, $890 for up to 150 and $1,690 for up to 300, each with a written report per document.
Want to know why we test with a screen reader as well as a checker? Read why a checker pass is not enough.