Testing Usability of Tools for Making PDFs Accessible: Pressing Issues and Pain Points

Nowadays, most digital documents are available in the form of PDF files. The main problem, however, is that there are hardly any tools that automatically generate accessible PDFs, which is why they have to be made accessible. In a study with nine participants, we investigate the usability of three tools (Adobe Acrobat Pro, Axes and PAVE), used for making PDFs accessible. Our results show that the SUS score of PAVE is best, followed by AXES and Acrobat. None of the three tools, however, achieves an SUS score above 50 and therefore need improvements. The qualitative analysis points at three main problems: (i) users felt lost and do not know what to do, (ii) there is no or insufficient possibility to track changes and (iii) the interfaces are not easy to use.