Four steps to an accessible PDF

You can use PAVE to make your PDF documents accessible and to interpret conventional reader programs correctly. It does not change the visual layout of your PDF. The ICT Accessibility Lab of the ZHAW School of Engineering which developed PAVE, is making it available free of charge for personal use. Give it a try! If you want to make a large volume of PDFs accessible, please contact us .

1. Upload your PDF document to PAVE.
   Please note: The maximal allowed file size is 5 megabytes.
2. PAVE will make the automatic corrections.
3. Simply make the remaining corrections yourself in PAVE.
4. Now you can download the accessible PDF document. The PDF document will remain on the PAVE server for a maximum of three weeks, unless you delete it manually beforehand.

PAVE is optimised for the use on desctop screens and therefore request for a window of suitable width. Please note that the work with PAVE on screens smaller than 10 inches may get confusing.

Start PAVE

Disclaimer

While we make every effort to avoid changes to content or presentation of the document when edited in PAVE, we cannot provide a guarantee. The user is responsible for reviewing the PDF documents generated. ZHAW assumes no liability.

Why are accessible PDF documents important?

Persons with visual impairments can have electronic documents read aloud to them with a special software. However, this works well with PDF documents only if they are properly tagged – i.e. have the required metadata embedded. However, this is not frequently the case. There is now a simple solution to this widespread problem: Make your PDF documents accessible directly in PAVE.

Although the ICT Accessibility Lab has previously developed plug-ins to create accessible PDF documents from MS Word and MS PowerPoint, you cannot use these to make existing PDFs accessible. The gap is now closed thanks to PAVE.