PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) was formalized in July 2012 as the ISO 14289-1 standard and is the designation for a variety of PDF specifically designed to create accessible PDF documents.

This standard provides a uniform description of the requirements that a PDF document must satisfy, and which also fulfills the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The goal is to make PDF documents usable with the same degree of ease and quality for individuals with disabilities as they are for those without disabilities. In Germany, the Equal Rights for Disabled Persons Act (BGG) specifically stipulates that federal agencies must ensure web accessibility for their websites and the services that these sites offer.

As a compliance requirement, a careful system of document lifecycle management (DLM) is of crucial importance.

The complete lifecycle of a document - from its creation, to storage and archiving, all the way to disposal - needs a precise audit trail to ensure compliance with auditing requirements. For businesses, and especially today when the flood of electronic documents keeps rising, this need to track documents has become a massive undertaking that requires a great deal of resources. This burden can be eased by turning to PDF for standardization and the PDF/A format for long-term archiving.

How to use PDF documents with audio and video as multidimensional communications tools

PDF files are the ideal exchange format since they can be opened on any platform and they avoid those notorious conversion problems that can occur on devices with different operating systems. But here's something not many people know: Adding audio and video files is just as easy as including text, images and graphics. This is the kind of feature that can create tremendous value, not only because it eliminates having a bunch of bothersome email attachments, but because it opens the way to what is truly a rich and full-scale multimedia communications experience.