Many organizations struggle with inconsistent processes, redundant work, or unclear handoffs when remediating documents. Equidox’s workflow is designed to streamline every step—importing, AI tagging, manual editing, exporting, and final compliance checks—so your team can work faster, more reliably, and with full auditability.
Below is a more detailed breakdown of that workflow, along with tips, tools, and links to deeper resources.
1. Import
The first step in any remediation job is importing the PDFs to the system. With Equidox, you can drag and drop multiple files or select via file upload. Once the document is uploaded, it can be prepared for analysis.
Before remediation begins, practitioners often perform pre-flight observations:
- How many pages does the document have?
- How complex is the content (tables, images, forms)?
- Is there an existing tag structure that can be leveraged or cleaned up?
These observations help you set realistic timelines and decide whether to break the work into parts.
If content follows a consistent layout, that consistency can speed remediation. Equidox can detect that consistency and let you reuse patterns with Zone Transfer and Page Match features.
2. AI Tagging
Once PDFs are imported, Equidox’s Smart Detection Tools kick in. These AI-driven features automatically detect zones for text, headings, images, links, lists, and more.
- Smart Zone Detector: automatically divides content into zones (text, images, etc.).
- Smart List Detector: identifies list structures, including nested lists.
- Smart Table Detector: finds columns, rows, and allows you to set merged cells, header levels, and automatically creates table summaries.
These tools dramatically reduce manual tagging effort, while leaving you in control to correct or refine.
For high-volume, templated PDFs (like statements, invoices, directories), the fully automated solution, Equidox AI, can automatically remediate entire batches. Simply upload zipped files or integrate via API, select the appropriate model, run the batch, and receive fully tagged results.
3. Editing
No automation is perfect—and real documents often need fine-tuning. After AI tagging, remediation teams move into the editing zones phase of remediation to:
- Adjust zones or reposition them
- Assign correct tag types (heading levels, lists vs. paragraphs)
- Add alt text to images or mark decorative elements as artifacts
- Handle forms: label fields, add tooltips, ensure correct edit/reading mode behavior
- Correct reading order using a reorder tool or decimal re-ordering
- Label tricky tables (merged cells, multi-row headers)
- Validate via HTML preview to see what assistive technology users would experience
During editing, Equidox allows collaboration—multiple users can work on the same document, divide tasks (text, tables, images), and maintain version control so work isn’t lost or duplicated.
4. Export
Once editing is complete and the document is clean, the next step is export. Equidox allows you to generate final accessible PDFs or export to alternate formats such as HTML or ePub, depending on your needs.
During export, Equidox embeds all tags correctly, preserves reading order, and maintains styles for headings, lists, and tables, ensuring assistive technology reads the content accurately. Output warnings highlight machine-detectable accessibility issues—such as incorrect heading structures, missing alt text, or untagged elements—so you can fix them before exporting.
5. Compliance Check
After export, no workflow is complete without validation. Even strong automation requires human review.
Equidox supports compliance checks in two key ways:
- Automated accessibility checkers catch obvious tagging errors or omissions
- Manual review (using a screen reader) confirms usability and correctness (reading order, alt text appropriateness)
These steps help ensure the document truly meets WCAG, Section 508, EAA, or other applicable standards.
If the team finds issues, they return and edit the PDF zones, make corrections, and re-export the document.
Why This Workflow Matters
A structured workflow like this ensures consistency, accountability, and scalability. Teams know exactly what to do at each step. Backlogs get reduced. Errors are caught early. Compliance is auditable.
Equidox combines smart automation with human oversight, allowing teams to process high volumes of documents quickly without sacrificing accessibility quality.
When paired with internal resources and training, this workflow becomes a repeatable, reliable system for any organization tackling PDF accessibility.
Further Resources
Tammy Albee
Tammy Albee | Director of Marketing | Equidox Tammy joined Equidox after four years of experience working at the National Federation of the Blind. She firmly maintains that accessibility is about reaching everyone, regardless of ability, and boosting your market share in the process. "Nobody should be barred from accessing information. It's what drives our modern society."