Preparing a PDF for real readers, not just a clean export
A PDF can look polished on screen and still be awkward to navigate with a keyboard, screen reader, or small display. Accessibility and publishing checks focus on the parts that are easy to miss during design: reading order, document language, headings, image descriptions, link behavior, metadata, and whether the final file is suitable for distribution. These details matter for public reports, teaching materials, forms, manuals, and documents that will stay online for a long time.
Treat automated checks as a review aid rather than a final pass. A tool can flag missing metadata or suspicious structure, but it cannot always tell whether a heading hierarchy makes sense or whether alternative text is genuinely useful. For publishing work, it also helps to open the finished PDF in more than one viewer and test the document the way a reader would actually use it.