What the Revised 508 Standards say about documents
Section E205 of the Revised 508 Standards covers electronic content. E205.4 sets the bar: electronic content "shall conform to Level A and Level AA Success Criteria and Conformance Requirements in WCAG 2.0". E205.2 applies that to all public-facing content. E205.3 extends it to internal agency communications in listed categories, including emergency notifications, benefits and employment notices, forms and templates, and educational and training materials.
Separately, 504.2.2 requires authoring tools that can export PDF to support PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1). The full text is on the U.S. Access Board site.
Section 508 and ADA Title II are different rules
Section 508 applies to federal agencies. State and local governments, including public schools, colleges and transit agencies, fall under the Department of Justice's ADA Title II web rule, which uses WCAG 2.1 Level AA. WCAG 2.1 includes every WCAG 2.0 criterion, so a PDF that meets 2.1 AA also meets 2.0 AA.
On April 20, 2026 the Department of Justice extended the Title II compliance dates by a year: April 26, 2027 for public entities with a total population of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for those under 50,000 and for special district governments (Federal Register, 2026-07663). According to the ADA.gov summary, PDFs posted before an entity's compliance date usually do not need to be remediated, with exceptions set out in the rule. Read the rule itself, not a summary, before deciding what is in scope for you.
A 508 PDF checklist
The checker covers the items marked "automated". The rest need a person.
- Automated: the PDF has a real text layer and is not an image-only scan.
- Automated: the document is tagged on every page.
- Automated: headings are tagged and do not skip levels.
- Automated: every figure has alt text.
- Automated: every data table has header cells.
- Automated: the document language is set.
- Automated: a title is set and displayed instead of the file name.
- Automated: longer documents have bookmarks.
- Automated: security settings do not block assistive technology from reading the text.
- By hand: reading order matches the visual order.
- By hand: alt text describes what the image conveys.
- By hand: colour contrast and use of colour alone.
- By hand: form fields have labels and a logical tab order.
Federal agencies also publish their own test processes. The Section508.gov PDF guidance is the place to start.
Why the file stays on your machine
The checker runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, so you can test documents that contain personal or pre-release information without sending them to a third party. It checks and reports. It does not remediate: tags, alt text and table structure are fixed in the source document or a remediation tool. PDFNavigator's own tools fix missing bookmarks and remove owner-password restrictions, nothing more.
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