Colleges Must Revise Millions of Web Pages. It Will Be ‘Painful.’

Another reality is that higher ed loves documents — especially PDFs, a much-maligned format among accessibility advocates. PDFs are, for example, often missing style “tags,” which define elements like headings, paragraphs, and tables, making them effectively unintelligible to assistive technologies like screen readers.

Indeed, Max Bronsema, director of web-communication technologies at Western Washington University, said he considers remediating documents like PDFs “the largest challenge” in complying with the new regulations.