IronPDF PDF/UA Compliance Overview
Current PDF/UA standard conformed by IronPDF and its roadmap
Current Conformance Status
IronPDF supports generating tagged PDF documents that conform to ISO 14289-1 (PDF/UA-1), the international standard for accessible PDF files.
Validation of PDF/UA output from IronPDF are being done using VeraPDF, which confirms that the library produces files that meet structural compliance with the PDF/UA-1 standard.
Validation Behavior
| Validator | Result |
|---|---|
| VeraPDF | ✅ Passes validation |
| PAC (PDF Accessibility Checker) | ✅ Passes validation |
While IronPDF passes VeraPDF checks, however the same documents might fail validation in the PAC tool while validating the PDF/UA output.
We tried to cover every test possible to check PAC validation. If you encounter with fail validation, please reach out to support@ironsoftware.com with the input and repro code.
What This Means
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IronPDF-generated PDFs are structurally compliant with ISO 14289-1.
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However, practical accessibility issues (e.g., missing alternative text, incorrect tag nesting, or untagged annotations) may still cause failures in stricter tools like PAC.
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Customers operating in regulated environments may require additional validation steps or post-processing outside of IronPDF to meet usability-focused accessibility requirements. From v2026.9.2,
PdfDocument.SetImageAltTextcan set or update alternate text on images in existing PDFs, and the value is preserved when converting to PDF/UA.
Roadmap
Iron Software is actively investigating improvements to enhance compatibility with PDF/UA validation tools like PAC and ensure better screen reader support. Recent releases include several PDF/UA fixes. From v2026.9.2, SaveAsPdfUA() on an existing PDF no longer produces an invalid structure tree that made PAC and screen readers report pages as empty. From v2026.10.1, RenderHtmlAsPdfUA no longer marks wrapped paragraphs as artifacts, PDF/UA identification metadata in XMP is retained, tagged structure and accessibility metadata are preserved when merging, importing or securing PDFs, merged documents saved as PDF/UA decode correctly in strict readers, and images no longer disappear after a page resize.
The goal is to meet both the technical requirements of ISO 14289-1 as well as the practical accessibility expectations, such as those enforced by PAC (compliance based on ISO 32000-1).