PDF accessibility
Generate Alt Text for Your PDF's Images
Every meaningful image needs a description a screen reader can speak — written into the PDF's structure, not pasted in a document nobody ships.
Alt text in a PDF lives inside the tag structure: each Figure element carries a description assistive technology reads aloud. Two problems make it perpetually missing — most PDFs have no tag structure to attach it to, and describing dozens of images is tedious. Ceereo solves both in one pass: the document is tagged, and vision analysis drafts a meaningful description for each image — what the chart shows, what the photo depicts — placed on the Figure element itself. You get the audit first, free; the fixed file carries the descriptions inside it.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
PDF alt text lives on Figure tags inside the document's structure — which is why untagged PDFs can't have any. Ceereo tags the document and drafts meaningful, vision-generated descriptions for each image (what a chart shows, not 'an image'), written directly into the file and verifiable in any tag inspector.
How do I add alt text to a PDF?
Alt text attaches to Figure tags in the PDF's structure tree, so the document must be tagged first; then each figure's tag gets an /Alt description. Manually that's Acrobat's tag panel, image by image. Ceereo automates both steps — tagging plus vision-drafted descriptions of what each image actually shows — and the result is inspectable in any PDF tag viewer.
Descriptions with content
"Chart" is not alt text
The word 'image' read aloud tells a blind reader nothing. Useful alt text carries the information the image was doing on the page — 'bar chart: revenue rising from $2M to $8M, 2020–2024'. Vision models are genuinely good at this now; the craft is putting those drafts into the right structural slot in the file, which is the part this tool owns.
Features
Why teams choose Ceereo
Vision-drafted descriptions
Charts described by their data story; photos by their subject — not filename guesses.
Written into the structure
Descriptions live on the Figure tags in the file, where assistive tech reads them.
Reviewable
The report lists every generated description so you can spot-correct the ones that matter most.
Use cases
Where Ceereo works best
Chart-heavy reports
Annual reports and dashboards where figures carry the argument.
Product manuals
Diagrams and steps a blind user otherwise loses entirely.
Audit findings
'Figures missing alternate text' resolved across the document in one pass.
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.
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.
- Figure tags with meaningful /Alt descriptions
- Decorative furniture marked as artifacts instead of described
- Full tag structure included (alt text requires it)
- Machine-verified, pixel-identical output
Topic cluster
Related PDF accessibility tools
Other ways to audit and fix your PDFs for ADA, 508, and EAA compliance.
Fix Your PDF's Reading Order
When a screen reader jumps from headline to footer to column three, the file's structure is wrong — not the reader. This rebuilds it.
structureTag Your Untagged PDF
"Document is not tagged" is the #1 accessibility failure. This adds the full tag layer to the PDF you already have.
structure
Frequently asked questions
Are AI descriptions good enough?+
For most figures, modern vision models produce genuinely informative drafts — and the report shows you each one for spot-review. High-stakes images (medical, legal) deserve your own wording; edit those and keep the rest.
What about purely decorative images?+
Decoration shouldn't be described — it should be skipped. Borders and flourishes are marked as artifacts so screen readers pass over them silently.
Can I bring my own alt text?+
Spot-editing arrives with the review workflow; today you get vision drafts plus the report listing them all.
Describe your document's images
Free audit shows what's missing; the fix writes real descriptions into the file.