Accessible PDFs for higher education
Module handbooks, examination regulations, course materials and forms are created across many university departments. As public-sector bodies, universities must make this content accessible. Accessful automatically audits and remediates PDFs in line with PDF/UA-2, WCAG 2.2 and EN 301 549 without changing their layout or content.
The challenge
Universities create documents across many departments at once: examination offices publish regulations, faculties provide course materials and module handbooks, administrative teams maintain forms and applications, and libraries and research institutions populate repositories. No central team can manually remediate this distributed output; the volume and frequency are simply too high.
This directly affects students with disabilities. When examination regulations, course materials or application forms cannot be read with assistive technologies, students face avoidable barriers in their day-to-day studies. Reasonable accommodations cannot work effectively if the underlying documents are inaccessible.
Universities also have extensive legacy collections, often comprising thousands of PDFs accumulated over many years across websites and repositories. As public-sector bodies, they are monitored under BITV 2.0 or corresponding state law, which expressly covers published documents. Accessful provides automated auditing and remediation across departments, with batch processing for existing collections.
Typical documents
- Module handbooks, study regulations and examination regulations
- Lecture notes and teaching materials
- Forms and applications for students and staff
- Research reports and publications in repositories
- Official notices and administrative documents
- Information for prospective and incoming students
How Accessful helps higher education institutions
-
Available across departments – with no training
The web app is intentionally simple: upload a regulation or course document using drag-and-drop, follow its live status and retrieve the remediated PDF. Each department can work independently without specialist knowledge.
-
Remediate existing document collections in batches
Accessful automatically processes thousands of documents through the web app or from URL lists submitted to the REST API. This makes it possible to remediate repositories and download areas systematically.
-
Audit report for every document
Every document receives an audit-ready report, allowing you to document the status of your PDF collections for BITV 2.0 monitoring or internal reporting.
-
Course materials remain unchanged
Layout and content remain unchanged. Only the structural layer is supplemented: tags, reading order and alt text - in over 110 languages, including for English-language courses and publications.
-
Run Accessful in your university data centre
Deploy Accessful entirely within your own infrastructure, optionally air-gapped and using your own AI models. Alternatively, documents are processed in ISO/IEC 27001-certified data centres in Germany.
-
Remediation guarantee
If a document remediated by Accessful is not recognised as accessible during an accessibility audit, we will remediate it free of charge – promptly and at no additional cost.
Legal framework
- EU Directive 2016/2102, BITV 2.0 and state law
- Public universities are public-sector bodies, so their websites and published documents must be accessible. BITV 2.0 specifies the requirements for federal institutions, while corresponding state regulations apply to most universities. Compliance may be assessed through BITV conformance testing.
- EN 301 549, WCAG 2.2 and PDF/UA-2
- The European standard EN 301 549 specifies the technical requirements; WCAG 2.2 and PDF/UA-2 are relevant for PDF documents. Accessful audits and remediates against exactly these standards and documents the results for each document.
- Higher education law and reasonable accommodations
- The German Framework Act for Higher Education and state higher education acts require universities not to disadvantage students with disabilities. Accessible teaching, examination and administrative documents are an essential practical foundation for meeting that obligation.
- BFSG for private providers
- The German Accessibility Strengthening Act applies to the private sector. Private universities and education providers may fall within its scope, for example when study-programme contracts are concluded through e-commerce. Each case should be assessed individually.
Note: This content provides general information about legal requirements and does not constitute legal advice.
Frequently asked questions about higher education
Do PDFs on university websites also have to be accessible?
Yes. In addition to websites, BITV 2.0 and corresponding state regulations cover office-document formats, particularly PDFs published on websites or portals. The exception is limited to certain legacy documents published before 23 September 2018 that are not needed for active administrative procedures. Our guide explains the legal framework: BITV 2.0: accessible PDFs in the public sector.
Can departments and institutes use Accessful independently?
Yes. Accessful is designed for independent use across departments. The web app requires no training: drag the PDF into the browser, let remediation run automatically, then download and publish the result. Prepaid page packages have no per-user licences, so departments, institutes and central teams can procure their own packages and manage costs separately. Details are available on the Pricing page.
How do we make thousands of old PDFs in repositories accessible?
Use batch processing to remediate even very large collections automatically. Submit complete URL lists from your repository through the REST API, track each document through status queries or webhooks, and retrieve the remediated files automatically. Results are typically available in seconds. For details, see API & Integration.
Will the content of examination and study regulations remain unchanged?
Yes. Accessful leaves layout and content unchanged and adds only the structural layer: tags, reading order and alt text. The appearance remains identical. Note that digitally signed PDFs must be signed again after any technical modification.
Is there a deployment option for universities with their own data centre?
Yes. Accessful can run entirely on premises in your infrastructure, optionally air-gapped and using your own AI models behind your firewall. With the cloud deployment, documents are processed in ISO/IEC 27001-certified data centres in Germany. For details, see On-Premises.
Check your PDFs for accessibility – free of charge.
Upload a document and receive a result in seconds - without registering. Or let us show you Accessful in person.