How do you publish a designed document as an accessible PDF and web page?

Sources last checked 2026-10-06 · next check 2027-07-06, in case anything has quietly stopped being true

Accessible PDF keeps a document's words and its visual design as two separate parts of one easily edited text file. Each time you create the PDF or HTML, it lays the words into the design. The result is a tagged PDF meeting PDF/UA, an HTML page meeting WCAG 2.2 AA, or both, with the reading order exactly as written. Writers and the designer can work at the same time, a translation is a second set of words built into the same design, and a 300-page document takes no more design work than a 30-page one. To start, text and design can be imported from a PowerPoint or Adobe file.

What goes in and what comes out

Stage	What happens
Design and text in	The page designs, the diagrams and the starting text are read from a .pptx. Illustrator, InDesign, Figma and Canva all export or save to .pptx, so the design does not have to be made in PowerPoint.
One plain-text file	Words at the top, design underneath. The format is YAML, a plain-text format for labelled lists that opens in any text editor.
PDF out	A tagged PDF meeting PDF/UA, the ISO standard for accessible PDFs (ISO 14289-1).
HTML out	A web page meeting WCAG 2.2 at level AA, the standard every website is measured against.

The design is handed over as a few page designs, one per kind of page: a chapter opener, a body page, a full-page image, a quote page, etc. Six or seven usually cover a document of any length.

Writing and design at the same time

An edit freeze is the date after which the text cannot change, because the designer has started laying it out and every later change has to be fitted in again by hand. Most designed documents have one, and most of them are broken at least twice.

Here the writers edit the words and the designer edits the design, in different parts of the same file. Ordinary version control merges the two, shows exactly what each person changed, and can undo one person's change without touching the other's. A build takes seconds, so both check their work on real pages as often as they like, up to the day of publication.

Translations

Each language is its own set of words built into the same design. The reading order, headings, lists and tables come out the same in every language, and a change to the design reaches every language at the next build. The build measures each block of text with the real font files and warns where a longer language runs into the block below or off the page, quoting the two measurements to fix.

It is the nearest thing to a Babel fish that publishing currently offers, though a person still has to do the translating.

Screen readers and reading order

A screen reader reads a document in its reading order, which in most PDFs is whatever order the boxes happened to be drawn in. Here the reading order is the order the words are written in the file, so it can be checked by reading the file, without opening a PDF tool.

Headings, lists and table header cells are tagged as what they are, so a screen reader can move through them.
Decorative panels and backgrounds are marked as decoration, so they stay out of the reading order.
A chart without alt text stops the build, so no untagged figure reaches the document.
Subscripts, superscripts and emphasis change only how the characters look, so search, copy and paste and screen readers read CO₂ as "CO2".

Public sector bodies must meet WCAG AA, documents on their websites included, under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. Everyone else has the Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments, and the same standards are the accepted measure of having tried. What a website audit checks is set out in what a website accessibility audit should cover.

Long documents with a repeating design

Each page design is reproduced on every page that uses it, identically, so a 300-page document takes no more design work than a 30-page one.
Refining a page design changes every page built from it at the next build.
Part and chapter titles repeat on the pages beneath them, taken from the real titles, so renaming a chapter once renames it everywhere.
Contents lists are built from the chapters that follow, as tagged lists with working links.
A page's number is its position in the file, so inserting a page renumbers nothing by hand.
One page can adjust its own layout without disturbing the shared design.

Working on it with an AI assistant

The words and the design are plain text in a fixed, labelled structure, so ChatGPT or another AI assistant can work on either directly: drafting or reworking sections, shortening text that overruns its box, producing a translation, or trying a new colour scheme or type size across every page design at once.

Every edit, by a person or an AI assistant, goes through the same check before anything is built. The build stops on a misspelt label, a missing alt text or a block the design does not define, and names the fix, so a mistake surfaces in seconds and never reaches the finished document. Version control shows exactly what the assistant changed, line by line, for review before it is kept.

What it costs to run

The build uses free software throughout, so nobody editing the text needs an InDesign, Illustrator or Acrobat licence. The design is reusable: the next document in the same house style starts from the finished design at no further design cost. The paid work is setting up the design from your PowerPoint file and the first build.

Limits

Which pages count as the same kind of page is a design decision, so the designer names the page designs when handing the file over.
Three gaps in the PDF come from the free software that exports it: chart alt text does not reach the PDF (use an image of the chart where it matters), links carry a description but not a full link tag, and small capitals become ordinary capitals.
Working notes left on a page are drawn untagged, so a document still carrying notes does not meet PDF/UA. Every build lists them.
The build has no automated PDF/UA conformance check yet.

Send the PowerPoint design and a sample of the text, and the reply will say how many page designs it needs and what the first build involves.

adam.hardy@cyberspaceroad.com