Check PDF accessibility in your terminal, CI or browser — no Java, no Windows, no uploads
outloud runs PDF/UA-1 and WCAG 2.2 conformance checks plus semantic rules that standard validators miss, like empty table headers and file-name alt text.
- LinkLoot access
- Free
- Provider costs
- Unknown
What you get from it
What it does
outloud is a command-line PDF accessibility checker that runs on any platform with no Java runtime, no Windows dependency, and no uploading of files — everything stays local. It checks against ISO 14289-1 (PDF/UA-1) and WCAG 2.2 success criteria at levels A and AA, covering all 31 checkpoints of the Matterhorn Protocol 1.1.
Beyond standard conformance rules (calibrated to agree with veraPDF across 160 test fixtures), outloud adds semantic checks that existing tools cannot perform: detecting alternative text that is just a filename or LaTeX source, header cells marked present but actually empty, prose tagged as decorative so screen readers skip it, pages whose tag order differs from their visual paint order, and formulas that swallowed surrounding sentences. Every finding includes the page number, bounding-box evidence, the relevant ISO clause and Matterhorn checkpoint, affected WCAG 2.2 criteria, and a one-line suggested fix.
Who it helps
Developers and QA teams who need quick accessibility answers without spinning up PAC's Windows desktop app or configuring veraPDF's Java environment. CI pipelines that want exit codes, JSON output, SARIF 2.1.0 for GitHub code scanning integration, or a single-file HTML report. Document authors checking remediated PDFs against originals. Anyone on macOS or Linux who has had no equivalent tool available until now.
Getting started
Install via pipx install outloud or uv tool install outloud. Run outloud --view to open a browser-based drop-file interface, or invoke directly: outloud file.pdf prints findings to the terminal and exits with code 1 if any error-level issue is found. Batch processing accepts multiple files and directories. Flags include --criteria for full PDF/UA-1 and WCAG 2.2 tables, --json, --sarif, --html for machine-readable outputs, --layer conformance to run only validator-equivalent checks, and --only/--skip for rule selection. Verdicts are pass, review (warnings only), fail (at least one error), or unreadable; --fail-on warning escalates warnings to failure status.
Limits and costs
Apache-2.0 licensed; free to use. The project is early-stage with limited public adoption data. Semantic-rule calibration claims agreement with veraPDF on specific fixture sets, but broader validation across diverse real-world documents may vary. No hosted service exists; you run it yourself. Pricing is not applicable.
Source links
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