Who does what
The line does not run between “easy” and “hard”, but between “derivable from the file” and “only decidable by meaning”. Everything of the first kind is done by the machine; everything of the second stays with you.
Check PDF documents and make them accessible
Wave Docs validates PDFs against PDF/UA-1 and rebuilds the structure that is missing: tags, reading order, headings, lists, tables, language and title. Whatever needs a human decision, the tool names – instead of pretending to know it. Available as a tab inside the Wave Access plugin and as a web app without WordPress. Checking is free; you only pay for what gets remediated.
Wave Docs is just launchingPlainly: the service runs, the interface does not yet run everywhere. Checking and remediation are live on our server; the tab inside the Wave Access plugin ships with the next release, the web app without WordPress shortly after. Page packages cannot be bought today. The prices below are here so you can plan – not so you order something you would not receive yet. If you want in earlier, drop us a line and we will add you to the test round.
PDFs on your website are covered too
The German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) does not spell out the requirements itself; it points to the harmonised standard EN 301 549. For downloadable documents, clause 10 is the relevant one – that is also how the German federal accessibility agency (Bundesfachstelle Barrierefreiheit) reads it. And there is nothing exotic in it: WCAG 2.1 at level AA applies, just to the document itself rather than to the page around it. A PDF in your download area is not an attachment governed by milder rules.
An accessible HTML version alongside does not replace the PDFA common piece of advice: publish the content as an accessible web page as well, then the PDF may stay as it is. For web pages that reasoning holds – clause 9.6 of EN 301 549 recognises the “conforming alternate version”. But clause 10, for downloadable documents, does not carry that provision over. Anyone relying on it is relying on a rule that was not written for documents. The PDF itself has to be right.
Grandfathering: what was already there may stay
§ 1 (4) BFSG exempts office documents published before 28 June 2025 – as long as they remain unchanged. The moment you swap a page, update a price list or re-export the PDF, it is a new document and the exemption falls away. For public sector bodies the same logic applies with the earlier date of 23 September 2018. In practice: your archive is not a building site, but everything new is.
How things actually stand
For the PDF Accessibility Index (March 2026), Allyant checked roughly 645,000 PDFs across more than 770 websites. 94.75 per cent of them were not accessible. This is not a niche problem of a few careless publishers – it is the normal case, and the reason why this work is still pending almost everywhere.
Four steps – and the fourth one is yours
The workflow is deliberately built so that a human agrees at the end. Everything before that takes the drudgery off your desk.
1. Check
File in, report out. veraPDF validates against the PDF/UA-1 profile, and a layout analysis is added on top: where structure tags are missing, where the reading order is unclear, which images have no alt text, whether there is a text layer at all. Every finding names the place and the step needed. Checking is free and uses no credit.
2. Remediate
The engine rebuilds the structure: tags, reading order, headings, lists, tables with header cells, document language, document title, window title, artifacts for headers and footers. For images without alt text the AI offers a suggestion – as a suggestion, not as a result. Then veraPDF runs a second time and you see in black and white what the pass achieved.
3. Review
Every run produces a list of the points a human has to look at – not as fine print but as a to-do list: the suggested alt texts, the heading levels (the ranking is a guess), table headers and merged cells, the reading order on multi-column pages.
4. Release
Until you release it, the result is labelled “machine-processed, unreviewed”. Only your click turns it into “reviewed”. That is not a formality: 45 of the 136 conditions in the Matterhorn Protocol cannot be decided by a machine at all. A tool that reports “passed” anyway is stating something it cannot know.
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Automatic
What Wave Docs takes off your hands
- Structure tags for untagged documents
- Reading order
- Headings and lists
- Tables: header cells for the first row where none are set
- Document language
- Document title and window title
- Artifacts for headers and footers
- AI alt-text suggestions
Yours
What only a human can do
- Approve alt texts on substance
- Describe charts and diagrams
- Label form fields
- Colour contrast in the layout
- Map merged table cells correctly
- Confirm the reading order in multi-column layouts
Two states, nothing in betweenWith us a document is either “machine-processed, unreviewed” or “reviewed and released”. There is no badge that presents an automatically remediated PDF as accessible. We know that sounds less comfortable than “accessible PDFs at the push of a button” – but it is the only statement that is true.
How the checking works
- veraPDF, profile PDF/UA-1: the reference tool for the standard – not our own interpretation. The report names the rule, the clause and the number of failed checks.
- Layout analysis on top: headings, lists and tables are recognised from the page image, so that completely untagged documents get a sensible structure at all.
- Processing in Germany: checking and remediation run on a server in Germany.
- Deletion after 14 days: results and intermediate files are removed automatically.
- Limits per job: up to 300 pages per document, up to 40 MB per file.
One example, not a promiseA six-page PDF without any tag structure – the classic export from a layout program – went into remediation with 611 failed PDF/UA checks and came out with 0; veraPDF reported the file as PDF/UA-1 compliant. Processing time around twelve seconds. That is a favourable case: few pages, single-column layout, no forms, no nested tables. With forms, merged table cells or multi-column pages the outcome is weaker. The number is no basis for expectations – but it is evidence that the remediation really does something.
Pricing
Checking is free. Report, score and list of findings cost no credit – so you can first see how your documents stand and then decide. Billing is per remediated page. A page that goes through remediation counts once; corrections to alt texts and headings cost nothing extra.
250 pages
€19.90
about 8 cents per page
1,000 pages
€59
just under 6 cents per page
5,000 pages
€199
about 4 cents per page
Prices as of July 2026, net, plus VAT. Page packages cannot be ordered yet – they arrive with the next plugin release. Until then: send an inquiry or just write to us.
Included in the Wave Access plans
- Free: 10 pages, once
- Pro: 50 pages per month
- Pro AI: 300 pages per month
- Agency: 1,500 pages per month
Wave Docs becomes a tab in Wave Access. If you already run the plugin, the page allowance arrives with the update – no extra order.
See Wave Access →Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF accessible after remediation?
It then meets the machine-testable conditions of PDF/UA-1 – the re-validation with veraPDF shows that. It is accessible once you have done the human review and released the document. That order cannot be short-circuited, and we do not claim to short-circuit it.
Isn’t it enough to offer the content as an accessible web page as well?
For web pages, EN 301 549 does allow a “conforming alternate version” in clause 9.6. Clause 10, which governs downloadable documents, does not carry that provision over. We would not rely on it. This is not binding legal advice – if a lot depends on it, have it checked by a lawyer.
Do I have to fix all my old PDFs?
Under § 1 (4) of the German BFSG, no: office documents published before 28 June 2025 are exempt – as long as they remain unchanged. For public sector bodies the same logic applies with the earlier date of 23 September 2018. As soon as you touch a document and republish it, the exemption is gone.
What happens to my files?
Processing runs on a server in Germany. Results and intermediate files are deleted after 14 days. For the alt-text suggestions, only the individual image is sent to the AI model, not the whole document.
Do I need WordPress?
No. Inside the Wave Access plugin it is most convenient, because the media library documents are already listed there. Without WordPress you upload the file and get the report and the remediated PDF back. Both routes are still being finished – see the note above.
What about scanned PDFs?
A scan without a text layer is an image. No tag structure will help there; it needs text recognition first. Wave Docs detects this case, stops the remediation and says so – instead of inventing a result.
What about Word and PowerPoint files?
Wave Docs works on the PDF file. The better route starts in the source document, though: if you use real heading styles, real lists and alt texts in Word, you export a PDF that is already half right – and there is less to repair afterwards.
- Criterion 1.3.1: Info and RelationshipsWhy structure is more than looks – the heart of all tagging work.
- Criterion 1.1.1: Non-text ContentWhat an alt text has to achieve, in a PDF as on the web.
- Writing alt textWhen describing helps and when silence is the better choice.
- BFSG and the EAAWho has to be accessible from when, with deadlines and exemptions.
- Scan a website for freeAn automated report against WCAG 2.1 A/AA – no sign-up.
Want in earlier?
Wave Docs goes wide with the next Wave Access release. If you want to start checking before that, you are welcome – tell us how many documents are sitting on your site.
What Wave Docs cannot doForm fields are checked but not labelled automatically – a label is a statement about meaning. Weak colour contrast cannot be repaired inside the PDF; the source document has to change. Merged table cells need a mapping that lives in the content, not in the code. And a scan without a text layer is rejected rather than dressed up. We write this here because otherwise it surfaces with the first difficult document – and then it sounds like an excuse.