Accessible Documents Initiative

Accessible academic documents
for your students with blindness

Affordable document remediation for your institution. Send us PDFs, Word files, EPUBs, presentations, or scanned material. We deliver tagged accessible documents with alt text, validated against PDF/UA-1, ready for screen readers. Standard documents in 5 to 7 working days; STEM documents with equations in 10 working days.

For institutions that want this work in-house, or that need a no-cost path to accessibility, we offer a 12 to 18 month capacity-building partnership. Training itself is free. Only travel and logistics are charged at cost-recovery, waivable on need.

Either path maps to your obligations under RPwD Act 2016, UGC Accessibility Guidelines, NIRF Outreach and Inclusivity, NAAC Criteria 4 and 7, and GIGW.

Start a conversation See the compliance map

Why this matters

One in five students has a print disability that affects how they read documents.

93 percent of PDFs in Indian higher education fail basic accessibility checks.

Affordable cost. The Accessible Documents Initiative is a mission-driven initiative. Per-document remediation is offered at affordable pricing; the partnership track has no service fee at all.

12 to 18 months to full in-house capability. Your staff run the pipeline independently.

Your obligations under Indian regulatory frameworks. We map directly to each.

Document accessibility for higher education in India is not optional. The work we do for your institution maps to specific clauses in the regulatory frameworks your team already reports against.

RPwD Act, 2016 (legal mandate)

"All educational institutions funded or recognised by them provide inclusive education to children with disabilities and towards that end... make buildings, campus and various facilities accessible... provide reasonable accommodation according to the individual's requirements." (Section 16)

Section 16 makes accessible educational facilities a legal duty for every educational institution. Section 17 requires free books and learning materials for students with benchmark disabilities up to age 18. Section 32 mandates a minimum 5 percent reservation in higher education seats.

UGC Accessibility Guidelines and Standards for Higher Education Institutions and Universities (2022, re-directed 2024)

Institutional websites, learning management systems, and online course content must "comply with global accessibility standards like WCAG 2.1, ensuring compatibility with screen readers and other assistive technologies." Provide academic support including "Braille materials, large-print books, sign language interpretation, audio books".

Every UGC-recognised institution is directed to provide accessible study material. Disability Liaison Officer required at every institution. Annual compliance reports submitted to the UGC.

UGC Pedagogical Guidelines for Divyangjans and Persons with Specific Learning Disabilities (NEP 2020 aligned)

"An inclusive pedagogy characterized by the use of multiple modes of delivery, addressing the various learning styles and learning needs of Divyangjans and students with specific learning disabilities, needs to be promoted at all levels of education."

Students with specific learning disabilities (dyslexia, dyspraxia) use screen readers and listening modes. Multiple modes of delivery are required, and accessible PDFs with alt text on figures are part of that obligation.

NIRF Ranking, Outreach and Inclusivity (10 percent of overall ranking)

"Facilities for Physically Challenged Students (PCS)" carries 20 marks for infrastructure and assistive technology provided for differently-abled students. The Outreach and Inclusivity parameter contributes 10 percent to the overall NIRF ranking. Accessible study material counts.

NAAC Assessment, Criteria 4 and 7

Criterion 4 (Infrastructure and Learning Resources) assesses provisions for differently-abled students including assistive technology, accessible websites, screen-reading software, scribes, readers, and soft copies of reading material. Criterion 7 (Institutional Values and Good Practices) assesses the institution's inclusive environment for Divyangjan students.

GIGW 3.0 (WCAG 2.1 AA mandate)

The Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and Apps "make WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance compulsory for all public digital services." Universities receiving central or state funding are required to ensure that institutional websites and learning portals meet this standard.

IQAC and AQAR (annual quality reporting)

Every NAAC-accredited institution is required to report annually on differently-abled facilities through the Internal Quality Assurance Cell, including assistive technology, accessible study materials, and infrastructure. Documents remediated through us, or by your in-house team after partnership handover, become evidence in that report.

Which students need accessible documents, and why it matters

Document inaccessibility is not a rare edge case. It affects a wide group of students who are rarely counted in institutional audits, because most have learned to manage quietly or have simply stopped trying to access certain materials.

  • Students who are blind or have low vision

    Screen readers such as NVDA and JAWS can only read a PDF that has been properly tagged: headings, paragraphs, figures with alt text, and tables with headers. An untagged PDF produces silence or random noise. Students using screen magnification face a different problem. A scanned PDF is just an image, and image content cannot be enlarged as readable text, reflowed, or read aloud. Both groups are entirely dependent on how a document was prepared.

    Combined, the largest print disability group in Indian higher education.

  • Students with specific learning disabilities

    Students with dyslexia rely on text-to-speech tools, font substitutions, and reading overlays. These tools only work when the underlying text is properly encoded and the reading order is correct. In multi-column academic layouts, common in Indian textbooks and research papers, incorrect reading order causes text-to-speech tools to read content out of sequence. Students with ADHD benefit from clear heading structures and bookmarks, which allow them to navigate directly to the section they need rather than scrolling through entire documents.

    1 in 10 students has dyslexia. 5 to 7 percent of university-age students have ADHD.

  • Students with motor and physical disabilities

    Students who cannot hold a physical textbook, or who use switch access, eye-gaze technology, or voice control, depend entirely on digital documents that are keyboard navigable and properly structured. A PDF without correct tab order effectively requires a mouse to use, which these students may not be able to operate. Accessible documents are not an accommodation for this group. They are the only viable format.

    Often underreported in institutional disability statistics.

  • Neurodivergent students broadly

    Consistent heading structures, clear language, predictable document layouts, and logical reading order benefit a wide group of students, including those with autism, acquired brain injuries, processing disorders, and age-related cognitive changes. These students rarely identify themselves in formal disability registers, but they make up a significant proportion of the student population. Good document structure is good design for everyone. For this group, it is often the difference between engaging with course material independently or not.

    15 to 20 percent of students identify as neurodivergent in some form.

"We have a scanner and a braille printer."

This is the most common response when we ask universities about their document accessibility provision. It is also not a solution, and it may be creating a false sense of coverage that leaves most students without support.

What does not work

The scanner-and-printer approach

  • Scanning a physical textbook produces an image-only PDF. Screen readers cannot read images. The student receives a file they still cannot access.
  • Braille printers serve students who read braille, a small subset of the blind population. They do not serve low vision, dyslexic, ADHD, or motor-impaired students.
  • One staff member with Acrobat Pro "checking" documents cannot scale to a department's full document load, especially STEM content with equations and tables.
  • Ad-hoc, request-based systems mean a student must already know to ask, know who to ask, wait for a response, and receive something usable. Most students give up.
  • No institutional memory. When the staff member leaves, the process leaves with them.

What actually works

A systematic, pipeline-based approach

  • Documents are remediated before students need them, not after a request. Proactive accessibility is the standard at leading universities worldwide.
  • Automated tagging tools handle document structure at volume, freeing human reviewers for the decisions automation cannot make: image descriptions, equation alt text, complex table markup.
  • Trained volunteers and staff handle what automation cannot: alt text for figures, equation descriptions for STEM content, complex table markup.
  • Validated output. Every document runs through veraPDF and PAC checks before delivery. A compliance certificate travels with the document.
  • Institutional knowledge is encoded in format templates and training, not in one person's head. Staff can change. The system remains.

What the world has built, and where the Accessible Documents Initiative fits

Universities in North America, the UK, Australia, and Africa have been building systematic accessible document operations for over a decade. Their approaches share a consistent finding: accessibility works when it is built into institutional processes, not handled case by case. The Accessible Documents Initiative draws on these proven models.

Arizona State University and Ohio State University: open-source STEM remediation at scale

ASU and Ohio State built an open-source approach to high-volume STEM document remediation, combining automated tagging, AI-generated descriptions for complex figures, and orchestrated processing workflows. Their work demonstrates that STEM accessibility can be handled systematically, not document by document.

Lesson: STEM documents need a different approach from standard documents. Automation handles structure. Trained specialists handle equations and complex figures. Both are needed at scale.

Penn State University: the maker-centred approach

Penn State's accessibility initiative trains the document creators (faculty and staff) rather than centralising remediation in one office. Their web accessibility guidelines and document standards training mean accessibility is embedded in how content is made, not patched afterwards.

Lesson: Train the people making the documents, not just the people fixing them. Faculty who know how to export accessible PDFs from InDesign or Word eliminate the remediation problem at source.

University of Washington, DO-IT: the proactive accessibility model

UW's DO-IT centre pioneered the idea that accessibility should be designed in from the start, not retrofitted. Their electronic document accessibility programme produces guides, trains staff, and partners with IT to ensure all new content meets accessibility standards before publication.

Lesson: Build the standard into procurement and publication workflows. Every new course pack should have an accessibility checkpoint before it reaches students.

Harvard University: the central resource model

Harvard's IT Accessibility office provides institution-wide guidance, training, and document templates. They publish their standards openly. Any faculty member can access the guidance without going through a helpdesk. They also run a remediation service for complex documents that departments cannot handle internally.

Lesson: A central accessible template library removes the most common barrier: faculty who want to do the right thing but do not know how.

JISC, United Kingdom: sector-wide shared infrastructure

JISC developed accessibility guidance and toolkits that universities adopt as baseline standards rather than each institution building from scratch. Their TechDis service provided accessible document production resources to institutions that lacked the staff to develop expertise independently. This is a model of shared infrastructure across a sector.

Lesson: When individual institutions cannot build full capacity, shared standards and shared tools reduce the burden on each one. The Accessible Documents Initiative plays this role for India and the wider Global South.

Building on global practice

Accessible document systems have been built across many contexts. The core logic is consistent everywhere: accessibility works when it is built into institutional processes, not handled case by case.

Indian universities share that core challenge and also face additional ones: documents in multiple scripts and languages, large volumes of scanned regional language textbooks, government exam papers with time-sensitive access needs, and staff capacity constraints that make large centralised accessibility units impractical.

Position: The Accessible Documents Initiative is built on global best practice and grounded in Indian reality. We are not importing a model. We are developing one that belongs here.

How we make your documents accessible

Every document goes through a structured process from assessment to validated delivery. Standard documents and STEM content follow different processing tracks, but both deliver the same outcome: documents that work with screen readers, braille displays, and assistive technology, validated against international standards.

Two processing tracks

Standard documents

Notes, textbooks, forms, letters, scanned PDFs. Automated tagging and batch processing using tools installed inside your own infrastructure. Your IT team learns to run these independently.

STEM content

Textbooks with equations, lab manuals, research papers, complex data tables. Specialised processing for equations, complex layouts, and high-volume batches. AI-powered tagging combined with specialist human review.

End-to-end pipeline

  1. Document assessment and classification. We analyse every incoming document for type, language, complexity, and STEM content. This determines which processing track it follows. Scanned documents go through OCR first to convert images into searchable text.
  2. OCR for scanned documents. Scanned PDFs are processed through OCR with language-specific models covering all Indic scripts, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili, and over 100 languages. This converts image-only PDFs into searchable text before any accessibility work begins.
  3. Automated structure tagging. Automated tools analyse the document layout and apply accessibility tags: headings, paragraphs, lists, figures, tables, reading order. Document Format Templates built for your institution's specific document types dramatically improve accuracy at this stage.
  4. Equation extraction (STEM documents). Mathematical equations are extracted and converted to formats that screen readers and braille displays can render meaningfully. Every equation receives a plain-language description written by a trained specialist.
  5. Specialist human review. Trained accessibility specialists handle what automation cannot: image descriptions, equation alt text, complex table markup. Work is split by type so specialists work in parallel, reducing turnaround time.
  6. Quality assurance and validation. Every document is validated against international accessibility standards using industry-standard tools. A senior reviewer does a screen reader spot-test before sign-off. A compliance certificate accompanies every delivery.
  7. Delivery in your chosen format. Remediated documents are delivered as tagged PDF (PDF/UA compliant), accessible Word (.docx), or both, depending on your institution's needs. A compliance certificate is attached to every delivery. Documents are deleted from active storage after an agreed retention period.
  8. Knowledge transfer to your team. As we process your documents, we document every decision: what configurations were applied, what templates were built, what corrections were made. This becomes the training material for your own staff. The process lives in your institution, not in our heads.

What this pipeline means for your institution

  • Your tools run on your own servers. Processing tools are installed within your own infrastructure. Your IT team runs them. Your staff learn them. Nothing is locked inside the Accessible Documents Initiative.
  • STEM content gets specialised processing. Documents with equations, complex layouts, and high-volume batches go through a dedicated STEM track with AI-powered tagging and specialist human review.
  • Your staff trained alongside ours. We do not train Accessible Documents Initiative staff and then train your staff separately. We train everyone at the same time, so the knowledge transfer is direct and immediate.
  • Document Format Templates belong to you. During onboarding, we build Document Format Templates for your specific recurring document types. These templates belong to your institution and improve processing accuracy for every batch you run, permanently.
  • Compliance certificates on every delivery. Every document comes with a veraPDF compliance report. If a student or regulator ever asks whether a document is accessible, you have proof, not just a promise.

What support looks like in practice

Two paths. Affordable per-document remediation when you need it. A 12 to 18 month capacity-building partnership when you want this work in-house.

  • Submit documents for remediation, at affordable cost

    Send us documents through the portal. We process them using the same dual-pipeline system we help you build internally: automated tagging, specialist human review, and veraPDF validation. Per-document pricing is kept affordable, with volume discounts for institutional batches. For institutions that cannot meet even these costs, tell us. We will find a way.

  • Training for your staff, at your campus, free

    We deliver structured, hands-on training in document accessibility: from orientation and sensitisation through PDF remediation, accessible document creation, STEM accessibility, EPUB development, and Easy Read content. The training itself is free. Sessions are delivered in-person at your campus. Only travel and logistics for trainers are charged at cost-recovery, waivable on need.

  • PDFix SDK installation and batch pipeline configuration inside your infrastructure

    We install and configure PDFix SDK within your institution's own infrastructure, on your servers, under your IT team's control. We build batch action JSON configurations for your recurring document types, train staff on the CLI and batch workflows, and set up manual correction and validation procedures. By the end of the engagement, your team runs the pipeline without us.

  • Document Format Templates built for your document families, owned by your institution

    Document Format Templates teach the tagging engine exactly how your institution's specific document layouts work: where headings always appear, what footer zones look like, how multi-column content is structured. We build these during onboarding from your actual documents. These templates belong permanently to your institution and improve auto-tagging accuracy for every batch you run in future, without further involvement from us. They are a tangible, lasting deliverable from the partnership.

  • Full STEM document processing: equations, MathML, specialist review

    STEM documents (textbooks with equations, lab manuals, research papers) go through a specialised processing track. This includes equation extraction, MathML generation for screen readers and braille displays, and specialist human review of every equation description. The STEM track is activated when your institution onboards and runs at affordable cost.

  • Access to the Community of Practice

    Partner institutions gain access to the Document Accessibility Community of Practice, a network of trained accessibility specialists. Members with training-delivery experience are available for structured training sessions at partner institutions, helping your staff build skills alongside experienced practitioners.

  • Annual accessibility audit included

    We audit ten documents per year from your institution and provide a detailed accessibility health report. This gives you evidence for internal reporting, external compliance, and for tracking improvement over time. We also review your Document Format Templates annually and update batch configurations as your document formats evolve. No commercial provider includes this in their base offering.

The 12 to 18 month capacity-building partnership

For institutions that want this work in-house long-term, or that need a no-cost path to accessibility, the capacity-building partnership runs for 12 to 18 months and ends with the pipeline, the templates, and the trained staff entirely yours. Training is free. Only travel and logistics for our trainers are at cost-recovery, waivable on need.

  1. Month 1 to 2: we remediate your documents and analyse your formats. First batch processed. Document Format Templates built for your top two to three document families. Staff briefed on what accessible documents look like. Letter of understanding signed, scope defined.
  2. Month 3 to 6: tools installed inside your infrastructure. IT team learns to run the batch processing tools. Designated staff join training on batch action configurations, manual correction workflows, and veraPDF validation. Pilot batch of 50 to 100 documents processed together.
  3. Month 6 to 12: your staff handle standard documents in-house. Routine document processing runs internally. The Accessible Documents Initiative handles STEM content and provides QA support. Document Format Templates refined from real usage data. Volume grows toward 5,000 pages per month.
  4. Month 12 to 18: full in-house capability. Your institution produces accessible documents independently for most document types at 5,000 to 20,000 pages per month. The Accessible Documents Initiative remains available for overflow, complex batches, and the annual audit. The pipeline, and the knowledge, belongs entirely to you.

The goal of this partnership track is to train your staff to run the tools internally, build and maintain their own Document Format Templates, perform manual corrections, and handle final review. Self-sufficiency within 12 to 18 months is the outcome we are working towards. For institutions that simply want documents remediated without bringing the work in-house, the affordable per-document service runs separately and indefinitely.

Training ecosystem

Training is delivered in-person at your campus, tailored to your document types and staff needs. No cost to your institution. Travel and accommodation support where applicable. Training components are aligned with internationally recognised document accessibility standards.

# Training component Level For
1Orientation and Sensitisation: Understanding Document AccessibilityFoundationAll staff
2Creating Accessible Documents from Source (Word, PowerPoint, InDesign)FoundationFaculty, publication staff
3PDF Remediation and ValidationIntermediateDisability services, library staff
4Accessible EPUB DevelopmentIntermediateDigital content teams
5STEM Document Accessibility: Equations, Tables, Complex LayoutsAdvancedSTEM faculty and staff
6Easy Read Content CreationIntermediateContent teams, disability services
7Setting Up an In-House Accessible Document OperationAdvancedIT leads, disability services leads

Training is tailored to your institution. We design the programme around your specific document types, languages, staff capacity, and institutional goals. Tell us what you need and we will propose a plan.

Pricing kept affordable

The Accessible Documents Initiative is a mission-driven initiative. Pricing is kept affordable for Global South institutions, with volume discounts for institutional batches.

For the capacity-building partnership track, training itself is free. Only travel and logistics for our trainers are charged at cost-recovery, and these too can be waived where an institution needs it.

Specific quotes are shared in your onboarding call, calibrated to your document types, languages, volumes, and institutional needs.

Affordable per-document pricing Volume discounts for batches Training free in the partnership Travel and logistics waivable on need No subscription fees No per-seat licences No bundled retainer No surprise renewals

Partner with the Accessible Documents Initiative

Tell us about your institution and what you need. There is no commitment involved at this stage. We will respond within three working days to talk through the options.

You can request any combination of the following:

  • Document remediation. Submit in batches via the portal. We process and return accessible PDFs or Word files at affordable cost, with volume discounts for institutional batches.
  • In-house tool setup. We install and configure processing tools inside your infrastructure, build Document Format Templates for your document families, and train your team to run the pipeline independently. Training is free.
  • STEM document processing. For STEM content: equations, lab manuals, research papers, and high-volume institutional batches. Specialised processing with AI-powered tagging and specialist human review.
  • Accessibility training. In-person at your campus, from orientation and sensitisation through PDF remediation, STEM accessibility, EPUB, and Easy Read. Training itself is free; only travel and logistics at cost-recovery.

Travel and logistics for trainers are the only additional costs for in-person partnership sessions at your campus, and these are waivable on need.

About your institution

What you are applying for

Your documents

Partner institutions typically reach 5,000 to 20,000 pages per month within 12 months of onboarding.

STEM content requires specialised processing. Knowing the proportion helps us plan the right infrastructure from the start.

Tactile content for STEM subjects (diagrams, graphs, maps) involves specialist human production and may have additional cost implications.

No commitment required. This begins a conversation, not a contract.

We will respond within three working days. Your information is used only to follow up on this request.

Common questions

Is this really affordable? What is the catch?

Per-document remediation is kept affordable, with volume discounts for institutional batches. For institutions that want this work in-house, the 12 to 18 month capacity-building partnership has no service fee at all. Training, setup handholding, annual accessibility audit, and Document Format Template building are all included in the partnership at no charge. The only additional cost in the partnership track is travel and logistics for trainers when in-person sessions are held at your campus, and even these are waivable where an institution needs it waived. There is no catch. The Accessible Documents Initiative is a mission-driven initiative. The mission is accessible documents for students, not revenue.

We are a small college with very limited staff. Can we still apply?

Yes. This programme is designed for institutions that do not have dedicated accessibility teams. You do not need existing expertise. That is what we provide. A single staff member who completes the PDFix SDK Pipeline Operations training can manage a significant document workflow using the batch configurations and Document Format Templates we help you build. Start with document remediation, learn as you go, and build capability gradually. The 12 to 18 month timeline is designed for institutions building from scratch.

How does the in-house setup actually work for our IT team?

The standard processing tools install on a standard server running Windows or Linux. We configure the PDFix SDK CLI and batch action JSON configurations for your specific document types, run the first batch together with your IT staff present, and build Document Format Templates for your two to three most common document families using the visual template builder. Your IT team runs subsequent batches. We remain available for questions and produce written documentation of every configuration decision, so the knowledge lives in your institution, not in our heads. STEM processing runs on dedicated infrastructure. We handle the deployment and train your senior accessibility volunteers to review and QA the output.

How do you handle standard documents versus STEM content?

Standard documents (notes, textbooks, forms, letters, scanned PDFs) are processed using tools installed inside your own infrastructure, under your IT team's control. STEM content (documents with equations, complex layouts, and high-volume institutional batches) goes through a specialised processing track with AI-powered tagging and specialist human review. The routing is automatic. At intake, the system classifies each document and sends it to the appropriate track. Both tracks share the same OCR preprocessing, the same specialist review network, and the same validation output.

What is the difference between PDF/UA and just "accessible"?

PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the international standard for universally accessible PDF. It is verifiable. Tools like veraPDF can check compliance algorithmically and produce a certificate. "Accessible" without a standard is a claim without evidence. Every document the Accessible Documents Initiative produces meets PDF/UA-1 and WCAG 2.1 AA standards, and comes with a veraPDF compliance report. If a regulator, funder, or student ever questions whether your documents are accessible, you have a certificate, not just a promise.

We have documents in Hindi, Tamil, and other Indian languages. Can you handle those?

Yes. Our OCR pipeline, shared across both standard and STEM processing tracks, uses Tesseract 5 with language-specific models for all major Indic scripts: Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu, Odia, and Assamese. PaddleOCR provides a fallback for complex layouts. Community of Practice members with regional language proficiency handle quality review for these documents. Multilingual capability is a deliberate design priority. The Global South context requires it, and we have built for it from the start.

What happens to our documents after remediation?

Documents are processed on Accessible Documents Initiative servers or dedicated STEM infrastructure and deleted from active storage 180 days after delivery, or per your agreed institutional retention policy. Volunteers see only their assigned pages or elements. They cannot download the full document. No document content is shared with third parties except for specific API calls (Mathpix for equations). The letter of understanding signed before we process any documents specifies exactly what happens to your data and the data deletion schedule.