At Digital Commons, we are committed to ongoing efforts to improve the accessibility of our platform. Promoting accessibility is a shared commitment and responsibility that we uphold alongside our scholarly partners. Through close collaboration with the administrators of Digital Commons repositories, we strive to ensure that each site and its content are as accessible as possible for all users.

In support of this effort, this page provides a collection of accessibility-related resources and tools. Please note: the links included below are not officially recommended or endorsed by Elsevier. They have been shared by members of the DC community to illustrate how different institutions are approaching their own accessibility challenges. 

Resources

Elsevier

• Elsevier’s accessibility policy 
• Elsevier’s statement on European Accessibility Act 

External

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 – From the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); this is the version of the WCAG specified in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the version Digital Commons is currently targeting
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 – From the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); this is the latest version of the WCAG 
• ADA fact sheet regarding WCAG – From the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
• Open letter to Library Vendors (and a brief fact sheet) – From the Library Accessibility Alliance
• ADA Title II regulations: Implications for Libraries (PDF) – From the Association of Research Libraries
• Post from Scholarly Kitchen: How Changes to ADA Title II Impact Libraries – And What We Can Do to Respond – Guest post from Latia Ward, Research Librarian at Arthur J. Morris Law Library at the University of Virginia School of Law

Tools

Common OCR Tools  

• Adobe Acrobat Pro – Built-in OCR for scanned PDFs  
• ABBYY FineReader – Industry-leading OCR tool for batch and high-accuracy conversion  
• Tesseract OCR – Free, open-source engine (used behind the scenes in many apps)  
• Google Drive / Google Docs – Can OCR uploaded image-based PDFs  
• Archivematica – Used by libraries for digital preservation workflows, supports OCR integration 

Screen Readers 

• NVDA – Windows, open source 
• JAWS – Windows, paid, includes scripting capabilities 
• VoiceOver – Built in with Mac products 
• TalkBack – Built in with Android products 

PDF & Word Document Accessibility  

Free

• Microsoft Accessibility Checker (built-in) – Available in Word and PowerPoint to check headings, alt text, contrast, reading order, and more  
• Adobe Acrobat Reader (Free version) – Allows you to view accessibility tags and run basic checks in the free version; good for auditing  
• PDF Accessibility Checker – Checks if PDFs meet PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) standards  
• WAVE Browser Extension – Analyzes HTML previews of PDFs or uploaded content pages for contrast, structure, and missing alt text  
• LibreOffice Accessibility Checker – Good if authors use LibreOffice; built-in tool for accessibility verification  
• CommonLook PDF Validator – Tests the accessibility of individual PDFs to identify issues; integrates with Acrobat

Paid

• Adobe Acrobat Pro – Full remediation toolkit: add tags, fix reading order, alt text, and run full accessibility check  
• Equidox – Web-based PDF remediation platform; designed for batch remediation of legacy documents  
• CommonLook PDF Software Suite – Enterprise-grade PDF accessibility validation and remediation 

Image Accessibility 

Free

• WAVE Tool – Highlights missing alt text on content pages 

Paid

• Axes4 for Word/PDF – Helps validate and fix accessibility of images inside documents, including alt text logic 
• Siteimprove or Acquia Optimize – These platforms offer accessibility reports for large batches of web/image content, including missing alt text and non-decorative tagging issues 

Video & Audio Accessibility 

Free

• YouTube Studio Auto-Captions – Automatically captions uploaded videos; captions can then be edited manually for accuracy 
• VLC Media Player – Supports subtitles and reviewing video metadata/audio tracks 
• Descript (Free tier) – Basic transcription of video/audio for captions 

Paid

• 3Play Media or Verbit – Professional captioning, audio description, and transcription services; WCAG-compliant 
• Rev.com – Paid human or AI-generated captions and transcripts, usable in platforms like Vimeo, YouTube, or your own repository 
• Descript (Pro tier) – Includes Overdub, auto-captioning, editing, and transcription cleanup with export tools 
• Yuja Video Platform – Used for closed captioning