Since 28th June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has required banking and investment services across the EU to be accessible, and this obligation extends to documents. For wealth banking teams, wealth statements and portfolio performance reports must now be readable by assistive technology, or risk penalties.
PDF/UA is the standard that makes documents readable for everyone, including those with disabilities. It defines how a PDF must be built so that assistive technology can read documents banks send to their customers.
This guide covers what PDF/UA is, how it relates to the European Accessibility Act, why it matters for wealth banking teams, the cost of non-compliance, and how to get PDF/UA-compliant.
PDF/UA for wealth banking: Key takeaways
- PDF/UA is the technical standard for how a PDF must be built (tags, reading order, alternative text and language metadata) so assistive technology can read it.
- Since 28th June 2025, the European Accessibility Act has required banking and investment services to provide customers with accessible documents.
- Wealth statements and reports are high-volume, detailed and structurally complex, which makes them the hardest documents to get right and the most important to make accessible.
- EAA penalties can reach six or seven figures, but they can also come in the form of product bans, accessibility audits and the public naming of non-compliant organisations.
- Customer communication software with PDF/UA capabilities, like Lasernet, allows wealth banking teams to generate compliant documents quickly and easily.
What is PDF/UA?
PDF/UA stands for Portable Document Format/Universal Accessibility. The PDF/UA standard (or ISO 14289) defines the technical requirements a PDF must meet to be accessible to people using assistive technology, such as screen readers, text-to-speech tools and screen magnifiers.
Because assistive technology interprets documents in a different way, documents that don’t meet the PDF/UA standard create a barrier between you and your disabled clients. When tags are missing and the reading order is muddled, disabled clients essentially lose access to the documents they need to understand their financial position. PDF/UA defines the structure that removes that barrier, so assistive technology interprets the document correctly.
For a wealth banking document, that structure must include:
Tagged content
Every heading, paragraph, table, list and image is tagged to tell the assistive technology what it is. This is how a screen reader, for example, tells a heading from body text or a table from a caption. Without these tags, it has no way to know.
A logical reading order
Because assistive technology like screen readers follow the tags rather than the visual layout, the reading order has to be arranged correctly. When the reading order is defined, the document is read logically, and when it isn’t, it reads out words and numbers in a hard-to-follow way.
Alternative text for vital images, diagrams and figures
Include descriptive alternative text for images, figures and diagrams, as it’ll allow those using assistive technology to understand what those elements convey. For example, good alt text for a performance chart might say: “Line chart of the portfolio’s 12-month total return, up 10%.”
Language metadata
Language metadata tells assistive technology which language the text is written in, allowing them to pronounce words correctly.
Artifacts marked to be skipped
In a PDF/UA-compliant document, some elements of the PDF are marked to be skipped by assistive technology, as including them would confuse users. For example, page borders, watermarks and background shading are marked as artifacts so they are excluded from the reading order.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) and PDF/UA
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is an EU directive that aims to make products and services more accessible, including banking services. The directive was adopted in 2019 and written into law in EU Member States by June 2022, which means the same accessibility rules now apply across the EU. The act came into effect on 28th June 2025 and it applies across the EU market.
The standards behind the act: WCAG and EN 301 549
The EAA is informed by two standards that define what accessibility means for EU businesses: WCAG, which sets the standards, and EN 301 549, which makes it enforceable across the EU:
WCAG 2.1 AA
Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standard for making web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WCAG 2.1 AA is built on four principles, known as POUR: content should be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust for it to be deemed accessible.
While WCAG was written for websites, it applies just as much to your business documents. WCAG is a voluntary web accessibility standard, but many organisations use it to comply with the rules of the EAA.
EN 301 549
The EAA and EN 301 549 often get conflated, but they are two separate things. The EAA outlines the legal rules for accessibility, while EN 301 549 provides the specific technical rules for businesses to follow. EN 301 549 is a harmonised standard under EU law, meaning it can be used to demonstrate compliance with the EAA’s accessibility requirements.
EN 301 549 uses WCAG as the foundation for the technical rules, but the former goes beyond web and mobile content to include hardware, telecommunications and other IT-related components.
How PDF/UA supports EAA compliance
PDF/UA provides the file-level technical rules needed to make PDF documents accessible, making it the practical implementation standard to satisfy the legal requirements of EN 301 549 and the accessibility criteria of WCAG. Producing PDFs that conform to both PDF/UA and WCAG, through EN 301 549, is the best route to EAA compliance.
Why PDF/UA matters for wealth banking
Wealth banking teams send some of the most detailed, high-value documents a bank produces, and those documents must be accessible to every client who receives them. PDF/UA is especially relevant to wealth banking for the following reasons:
Accessible documents serve every client
Almost 300 million people globally experience moderate to severe vision impairment, and many rely on screen readers, magnification or high-contrast settings to read their banking documents. A PDF that doesn’t meet the PDF/UA standard can’t be interpreted correctly by assistive technology, leaving those clients unable to read the information it contains.
A significant portion of any client base depends on accessible formats, and clearly structured documents benefit everyone else, too. Producing statements, valuations and reports to an accessible standard means every client can reliably access their financial information, supporting both regulatory compliance and a consistently high standard of service.
Your documents are high-volume and tightly regulated
Your wealth team produces a constant stream of regulated documents, generated at scale and personalised for each client, under strict rules governing what they contain and how long they are retained.
At that volume, accessibility can’t be handled one file at a time. A single statement run can reach tens of thousands of documents, all of which have to meet the standard, and manual work just can’t keep up with this pace. Accessibility has to be built into documents at the point of generation.
Banking documents contain complex layouts
Wealth banking documents are structurally complex. A single portfolio performance report combines multi-column layouts, dense tables, charts and footnotes. Assistive technology might be able to cope with a simple letter, but a document that complex gives the technology no order to follow. Without tags to define the structure, the software can’t tell the elements apart, making it impossible to interpret.
What are the consequences of PDF/UA non-compliance?
Each EU Member State enforces the EAA and determines its own penalties, which the Directive requires to be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive." They vary widely, with some fines running into six or even seven figures. For example, the maximum fine in Germany is €100,000 per violation, while Spain punishes non-compliance with a €600,000 maximum fine.
The act has only been in effect for a year, and we’re already seeing enforcement action. In June 2026, a French court ordered the French multinational retail and wholesaling corporation Carrefour to get up to full accessibility within six months or face a €500 a day fine for every day after the deadline passes. If the company fixes the accessibility problems before the deadline, it won’t have to pay any fines. While no fines have been levied yet, the case shows that the EAA is being enforced by legal systems in the EU.
But fines aren’t the only risk of non-compliance. Authorities can also ban non-compliant products, enforce accessibility audits and publicly name organisations that don’t meet their legal accessibility obligations.
How to get PDF/UA compliant
Despite the EAA coming into effect in 2025, PDF/UA compliance is still a major hurdle for many companies. Getting compliance right is harder than it looks, and some banks don’t realise the documents they’re sending clients aren’t fully compliant. A document can appear accessible, yet the output still fails validation, with a PDF accessibility checker like PAC returning dozens of errors on a document.
Across a large volume of documents, the most reliable way to achieve that is by using customer communication software with PDF/UA capabilities to produce accessible documents as they are generated. Here’s where to start:
Audit your document stack
Begin by auditing your existing document stack by running documents through the free PAC checker, which is built on the PDF Association’s Matterhorn Protocol. The checker identifies where each document falls short of the PDF/UA standard, and there are 136 failure conditions that prevent a file from being fully accessible.
Find a suitable CCM solution built for wealth banking
A customer communications platform with PDF/UA capabilities pulls data from the core banking system, applies the accessible template and outputs a tagged PDF/UA file for each document. A batch of 50,000 personalised portfolio performance reports are then produced compliant on the day they’re generated – no manual tweaks needed.
How Lasernet helps wealth banking teams produce accessible documents at scale
The hardest part of PDF/UA compliance in the wealth banking space is combining accessibility with document volume, and that’s why you need a customer communication software solution that does it all for you.
Lasernet is a customer communication platform built for regulated, high-volume document generation. It integrates directly with core banking systems such as Temenos, Thought Machine, SaaScada, Tuum and Mambu, converting live data into accurate, on-brand and accessible documents.
PDF/UA output is configured at the document design stage, where the title, language, tag structure, reading order and alt text are defined, and every document generated from that design is a tagged, accessible PDF.
See how Lasernet generates and delivers accessible, PDF/UA-compliant customer communications at scale using data from your core banking platform. Book a demo today.
Frequently asked questions
What does PDF/UA stand for?
PDF/UA stands for Portable Document Format/Universal Accessibility. The PDF/UA standard (or ISO 14289) defines the technical requirements a PDF must meet to be accessible to people using assistive technology.
What are the requirements of PDF/UA?
A PDF/UA-compliant document needs tagged content that identifies each element and a defined reading order for the assistive technology to follow. It also needs alternative text for images and charts, language metadata and skippable decorative elements.
Is PDF/UA the same as WCAG?
No, but they’re closely related. PDF/UA governs how a PDF is built, its tags, reading order and structure, while WCAG governs the accessibility of web content across digital formats.
How does PDF/UA link to the European Accessibility Act (EAA)?
The EAA requires customer-facing documents to be accessible. It relies on the harmonised standard EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA and covers non-web documents such as PDFs. PDF/UA is a recognised way to meet those requirements in a PDF.
How do I check if a document is PDF/UA compliant?
Use a PDF accessibility validation tool like the free PAC checker, which is built on the PDF Association’s Matterhorn Protocol.
