Standards
The standards behind accessible documents
What EN 301 549, WCAG, PDF/UA and the EAA actually require. Defined plainly, and mapped to what Normfluss checks.
What Normfluss validates against
- PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1)validated with veraPDF, the reference open-source validator.
- The parts of WCAG 2.2 AA that apply to PDFs, evaluated through explicit mappings recorded per criterion.
- WCAG 2.2 is the current version, not the superseded 2.1. Every check runs 119 criteria from a catalogue of 128: the other nine are WCAG 2.1 criteria, a different nine from those that need a person, kept only so that records signed before the change still point at what they were tested against.
- A signed evidence record of what was tested, what a human decided, and what was out of scope. Verifiable against our published key.
Normfluss reports technical conformance within the stated testing scope. It does not certify whole-document WCAG conformance or legal compliance. That stays your call, with your advisers.
How do these standards fit together?
They form a chain from law to bytes. The European Accessibility Act is the law; it points to the harmonised standard EN 301 549, which in turn adopts the WCAG success criteria; and for PDF specifically, PDF/UA (ISO 14289) defines how a compliant file must be tagged. Understand one and the others fall into place. Each entry below defines a single term and links to the ones it depends on.
Which of these does Normfluss actually check?
Normfluss validates PDFs against PDF/UA-1 and the parts of WCAG 2.2 AA that apply to PDFs, and issues signed evidence of exactly what was tested. Technical conformance within a stated scope, never a legal-compliance determination. How that maps to national obligations depends on where you operate; see document accessibility by country and by document type.
- EN 301 549EN 301 549 is the European harmonised standard for ICT accessibility. Chapter 10 covers non-web documents like PDFs: here's what it requires and how Normfluss checks it.
- WCAG 2.2WCAG 2.2 is the W3C standard for accessible digital content, organised around Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. Here's what it means for PDFs.
- PDF/UA (ISO 14289)PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the prescriptive standard for accessible PDFs: it defines exactly how tags, reading order, alt text and structure must be built into the file.
- European Accessibility Act (EAA)The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) sets accessibility requirements for products and services across the EU, applying from 28 June 2025.
- Tagged PDFA Tagged PDF carries a logical structure tree describing the meaning of its content: the foundation every other document-accessibility standard is built on.
- Alternative text (alt text)Alt text is a concise description attached to a non-text element so its information is available to people who can't see it. What good alt text is, and how PDFs get it wrong.
- PDF/UA vs WCAGPDF/UA and WCAG are complementary, not competing. WCAG defines the accessible experience; PDF/UA defines the file engineering. Why you apply both to a PDF.
- Document accessibilityDocument accessibility means a document can be read and understood by people using assistive technology. What it is, what makes a document accessible, and how it's checked.
- What makes a document accessibleThe features that make a document accessible: tags, reading order, alternative text, declared language, structured headings and tables, and labelled forms, and how each is checked.
- How to check if a document is accessibleHow to check whether a document is accessible: what to test (tags, reading order, alt text, language, structure), which tools do what, and where automated checks end and human review begins.
- Is WCAG legally required?WCAG is a technical standard, not a law, but laws across the EU and UK reference it as the conformance baseline. How WCAG becomes a legal obligation, and where.
- Accessibility statementsAn accessibility statement declares how accessible a service is, what isn't accessible and why. Where it's a legal requirement in the EU and UK, and what it must contain.
- Common WCAG violationsThe WCAG failures that show up most often in documents (missing alt text, untagged content, wrong reading order, undeclared language, unstructured tables) and which are machine-detectable.