Ceereo

PDF accessibility

Convert Your PDF to Section 508 Compliance

Section 508 reviews start with the same automated checks every time. Pass them with a tagged, verified PDF — produced from your original in minutes.

Section 508 requires US federal agencies — and, through procurement, their contractors and grantees — to make electronic documents accessible, with WCAG 2.0 AA incorporated as the standard. In practice, a 508 review of a PDF starts with the machine checks: tags present, language and title set, figures carrying alt text, fonts embedded, logical structure available to assistive technology. Ceereo converts an ordinary born-digital PDF into one that passes those checks — same visible document, new accessibility layer — with the verification report a 508 coordinator wants to see.

Pixel-identical output Minutes per document Try without signing up

Last updated: August 6, 2026 · Reviewed by the Ceereo team

Free audit, no signup — your full report opens on the next page.

How it works

From upload to accessible PDF in four steps

The fastest way from an inaccessible PDF to a tagged, verified one — no tag panel, no service queue, no visual changes.

  1. Step 1

    Upload your PDF

    Drop in the PDF you need to make accessible. Your file is processed only to audit and remediate it, and is never used to train models.

  2. Step 2

    The document is audited

    Every PDF/UA and WCAG machine check runs: tags, reading order, language, title, alt text, font embedding and text integrity.

  3. Step 3

    The structure is written in

    Headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and figures are tagged in reading order, with headers and footers marked as artifacts to be skipped.

  4. Step 4

    Download the accessible PDF

    Get your own file back with a full tag structure, re-audited and pixel-compared so you can prove nothing visible changed.

In short

A 508-compliant PDF is tagged, titled, language-declared, alt-texted, and structurally navigable — WCAG 2.0 AA applied to documents. Ceereo converts born-digital PDFs to pass these machine checks in minutes, with a before/after verification report for your 508 documentation.

What does Section 508 require of a PDF?

Under the Revised 508 Standards, electronic documents must meet WCAG 2.0 AA — for PDFs that means a proper tag structure with reading order, a declared language and document title, alt text on meaningful images, and content assistive technology can access. Reviews verify these with automated checkers first; Ceereo makes a PDF pass that layer and documents it.

For vendors & grantees

508 flows downhill into your contract

It isn't just agencies: deliverables, proposals, and grant-funded publications get 508-checked at intake. A vendor who ships tagged, verified PDFs sails through intake; one who doesn't becomes a compliance ticket. The per-document fix here costs less than the meeting about the ticket.

Features

Why teams choose Ceereo

Intake-ready output

Passes the automated layer 508 reviewers run first, with the report attached.

No authoring-tool dependency

Works on the PDF you already have — no need to rebuild in Word/InDesign with perfect export settings.

Batch-friendly pricing

Per-document pricing with packs for backlog clears.

Use cases

Where Ceereo works best

Federal contractors

Deliverables and reports that must clear agency 508 intake.

Grant-funded publications

Public outputs your funding terms require to be accessible.

Agency web teams

The long tail of legacy PDFs on .gov sites.

Why not do it by hand?

Ceereo vs. doing it manually

Remediating a PDF by hand in Acrobat's tag panel takes days and rarely verifies clean the first time. Here's the difference.

Approach
By hand / service
Ceereo
Time to remediate
Days of tag-panel work or a service queue
Minutes per document
Tags & reading order
Hand-built in Acrobat's tag panel
Rebuilt automatically
Verification
Run a checker yourself, interpret it
Re-audit + pixel-diff, automatic
Your document's look
At risk during editing
Never changed — pixel-verified
Cost shape
$3–10 per page (services)
Flat per document

Output quality

What the remediated PDF looks like

Every run produces a tagged, machine-verified PDF that is pixel-identical to your original. Here's what you get.

  • Tags, reading structure, artifacts, and metadata per PDF/UA practice
  • WCAG-mapped findings resolved and re-verified
  • Documentation: before/after machine-check report
  • Visually identical output, pixel-proven

Frequently asked questions

Is 508 the same as WCAG?+

The Revised 508 Standards incorporate WCAG 2.0 AA for documents, so in practice a 508-conformant PDF is one meeting WCAG's document-relevant criteria — which is what the checks here verify.

Do you produce a conformance statement?+

You get the machine-check report (before and after). Formal ACR/VPAT documents are a human-review deliverable — the report slots into that process as evidence.

What about Excel or Word files?+

This tool is PDFs only; export to PDF first, then remediate here.

Clear 508 intake

Upload the PDF; download the tagged, verified version.