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Conference 22–23 September 2025 📍 Washington D.C., USA

PDF Days North America 2025 — EAA Compliance, AI Legal Discovery, and AcroForm Futures

PDF Days North America 2025 was held in Washington D.C. on 22–23 September 2025. With the EU European Accessibility Act enforcement underway and the US DOJ Title II rules fully in effect, the conference pivoted to compliance reality: real-world PDF/UA-2 tool benchmarks, AI legal document discovery accuracy, post-quantum signature readiness in US federal agencies, and the path forward for AcroForm in an AI-first document world.

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Key takeaways

  • EAA compliance is a requirement for all businesses distributing digital content to EU customers — not just EU-based organisations.
  • AI legal document review depends on PDF text layer quality; image-only scanned PDFs are unusable for AI review.
  • True redaction (content stream removal) is required in legal discovery production — visual overlays are not sufficient.
  • AcroForm accessibility requires /TU field labels, logical tab order, and programmatic identification of required fields.
  • XFA form deprecation is complete in Acrobat DC; migrate XFA forms to AcroForms or HTML forms.
PDF Days North America 2025 took place on 22–23 September 2025 in Washington D.C. Organised by the PDF Association, the event brought together PDF engineers, legal technology professionals, and document accessibility specialists to discuss EAA compliance strategies, AI applications in legal document discovery, and the future of AcroForm technology.

EAA compliance for North American businesses

A significant portion of the conference addressed the European Accessibility Act's implications for North American businesses distributing digital content to EU customers. While the EAA is an EU directive, its scope extends to any business selling products or services into the EU market — including US and Canadian software companies, publishers, insurance providers, and financial services firms. The practical challenge for North American organisations: - Many PDF workflows were designed without accessibility in mind; retrofitting accessibility at scale requires systematic processes - Tagged PDF generation must be built into document creation pipelines, not added manually after the fact - Existing PDF backlogs may contain thousands of untagged documents that need remediation or replacement - PDF/UA conformance checking should be integrated as a quality gate in document publishing workflows The conference sessions included case studies from organisations that have completed large-scale PDF accessibility remediation programmes, covering cost estimation, tooling selection (CommonLook, Nuance OmniPage, Adobe Acrobat Pro), and workflow automation approaches.

AI and legal document discovery

Legal document discovery — the process of reviewing and producing documents in litigation — has been transformed by AI-based review tools. PDFs are the dominant format for produced documents in US federal litigation (governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure), and the quality of AI document review depends on PDF text layer quality. Key issues discussed: - Scanned PDF discovery production — PDFs produced as image-only scans without text layers cannot be searched or reviewed by AI tools; requiring OCR before production is becoming standard practice - Metadata preservation — discovery PDFs must preserve original metadata including author, creation date, and modification history for authentication purposes; stripping metadata creates chain-of-custody issues - Redaction in discovery — applying true redaction vs visual overlays; the discovery context requires absolute certainty that privileged or sensitive content is not extractable from the produced document - PDF/A for discovery production — some courts and jurisdictions are specifying PDF/A for long-term preservation of produced documents The intersection of AI-assisted review and PDF quality standards is an active area: Relativity, Epiq, and other discovery platforms are adding PDF quality checks to their ingestion pipelines.

AcroForm futures: accessibility and digital signatures

AcroForms — the standard PDF interactive form format — are widespread in government, legal, and financial services. The 2025 sessions addressed two specific AcroForm challenges: AcroForm accessibility: Many existing AcroForms have poor accessibility — missing field labels, incorrect tab order, inaccessible error messages. Making AcroForms accessible requires adding /TU (tooltip/accessible name) entries to each field, setting logical tab order, and ensuring required fields are identified programmatically. The W3C PDF accessibility techniques specify the exact PDF structure changes required for each form element type. AcroForm + digital signatures: Combining fillable AcroForm fields with digital signatures that certify the document is technically complex. A certifying signature locks the document structure; subsequent field fills must use "incremental save" so that the certifying signature remains valid. Sessions covered the correct workflow for forms that need both interactivity and signature integrity. XFA form deprecation was also discussed — Adobe deprecated XFA in Acrobat DC 2021, and the PDF Association recommends migrating all XFA-based forms to AcroForms or web-based HTML forms for long-term compatibility.

Frequently asked questions

What was PDF Days North America 2025?

PDF Days North America 2025 was a two-day technical conference held 22–23 September 2025 in Washington D.C., organised by the PDF Association. Sessions covered EAA accessibility compliance for North American businesses, AI in legal discovery workflows, and AcroForm technical improvements.

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to US companies?

Yes. The EAA applies to any business offering products or services in the EU market, regardless of where the business is headquartered. US companies distributing PDFs to EU consumers — including software documentation, financial documents, insurance policies, and e-commerce receipts — are within scope from June 2025.

What PDF format should be used for legal discovery production?

PDFs produced in US federal litigation must be text-searchable (scanned image-only PDFs require OCR), should preserve original metadata for chain-of-custody purposes, and must use true redaction (not visual overlays) for privileged or sensitive content. Some courts and matters specify PDF/A for long-term preservation. Check the specific court's standing orders and the producing party's ESI protocol.

How do I make an AcroForm accessible?

The main requirements: add /TU (Tooltip/User text) entries to all form fields as accessible names; set logical tab order matching visual reading order; identify required fields programmatically (not just visually); ensure error messages are accessible. Use Adobe Acrobat Pro to set these properties, or generate them correctly from the authoring tool. Validate with the PAC tool.

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The PDF tools and standards discussed at this event are available free — no account needed.

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