508 Compliant 3D PDFs

Published July 2025 - Based on EVS Version 2025.6.0

You are likely to encounter the requirement for 508 Compliance for some aspects of your work in the near future, if you haven’t already. Most U.S. Government agencies are required to make their websites and publicly accessible documents 508 compliant. For PDF files, whether or not they contain 3D Media, compliance is designated PDF/UA, for Universally Accessible.

If you are asked to make EVS outputs or a report with EVS modeling results 508 compliant this Tip will be relevant to you.

First, I need to disclose that this topic does not supplant the need for 508 accessibility expertise. Our goal is to provide guidelines which address the most fundamental accessibility requirements and suggest one path to meet them. You must appreciate that there are three levels of compliance (A through AAA) and EVS outputs, by their nature cannot fully meet them all.

These requirements attempt to address the needs of disabled persons meeting one or more of the following nine categories:

  1. Without Vision
  2. With Limited Vision
  3. Without Perception of Color
  4. Without Hearing
  5. With Limited Hearing
  6. Without Speech
  7. With Limited Manipulation
  8. With Limited Reach and Strength
  9. With Limited Language, Cognitive, and Learning Abilities

In the case of PDF documents, including ones containing 3D media (Adobe’s term for interactive 3D content), we enhance the accessibility of the PDF by taking the following steps

  • Layout your document including images, videos, and 3D media with a logical order.
  • Ensure that PDF Accessibility Tags allow for navigation of the document in its intended order.
    • Though all content (headers, captions, paragraphs, links, images, videos, and 3D media, etc.) are required to be tagged, to meet PDF/UA standards, Adobe acknowledges that 3D Media cannot be tagged as of August 2024.
  • Ensure that images, videos, and 3D media contain Alternate Text
  • Ensure that images, videos, and 3D media have adjacent links to a detailed text description (e.g. Long Description) of what that media contains and represents.
    • Ensure that a link at the end of the detailed text description returns the user back to the relevant image, video, or 3D media.