PDF Compliance Score - Rate Accessibility, Privacy & Archival Readiness

Four areas, one score

A file can be fully accessible and still carry its author's personal email in the metadata. It can be ready for an archive and still be unreadable with a screen reader. The compliance score checks all four areas at once and combines them, so you can compare files and see whether things are improving.

• Accessibility, 40%: tagging, title, language, alt text, headings, tables, fonts, forms and links.
• Privacy, 30%: metadata, earlier versions, comments, hidden text, attachments and personal data.
• Archiving, 15%: PDF/A declaration, embedded fonts, colour profile, encryption and scripts.
• Security, 15%: JavaScript, launch actions, attachments and XFA forms.

Why one serious problem drags a whole area down

Within each area, a single critical failure caps that area at 69. Without the cap, an untagged file that passes every minor rule could score in the 80s. That would be misleading, because someone using a screen reader cannot use that file at all.

Privacy works the same way. If the file still holds a version from before a redaction, tidy metadata does not make up for it.

Our 65-page Word test handbook, for example, scored 77 overall. It got 100 for security and 80 for privacy, which lost points for a phone number in the text and an email address in the author field. Accessibility was capped at 69 because of missing alt text and no title, and archiving at 69 because it was never exported as PDF/A.

Using the score as a team

Pick a minimum for anything that goes on your website or out to clients. 85 is a reasonable bar. Keep the downloaded report as a record. The rules and weights are fixed, so two people checking the same file will always get the same number.