PAVE 2.0: A New Generation of the Web Tool for PDF Accessibility

Europe, September 12 2016

The ICT-Accessibility Lab of the ZHAW, in collaboration with the Swiss Blind and Visually Impaired Association (SBV), has developed a web tool called PAVE which quickly and easily makes existing PDF documents accessible. This is critical for allowing existing screen-reading programs to read the correct content. With PAVE 2.0, the existing web tool has been fundamentally revised and extended with a new paragraph detection feature.

People with vision disabilities can read electronic documents using specialized software called screen readers. But such programs only work with PDF documents that are appropriately tagged or otherwise provided with the necessary metadata. PAVE is the world’s first web tool that solves this widespread problem in a simple way. Two years ago, in the ICT Accessibility Lab at ZHAW School of Engineering, researchers developed the PAVE web tool. PAVE allows users to test existing PDF documents for accessibility and to interactively make the necessary corrections. PAVE 2.0 resolves many accessibility issues automatically. The content and layout of the PDF remains unchanged. An updated user interface, with a modern design and improved usability, makes the web tool even more attractive to users. PAVE now automatically detects text sections and headers, which reduces the need for manual tagging. In the new version, tags can also be easily and simultaneously edited or deleted. And last but not least, it now provides keyboard shortcuts for faster control. This makes the usage of PAVE 2.0 much faster than its predecessor version.

The web tool can be used for free at the following web address: http://www.pave-pdf.org/index.en.html