Businesses send documents to customers every day: orders, invoices, agreements. More and more of them need to work with a screen reader. This post walks through one Business Central sales order, S-ORD101019, as REFRACT Platform turns it into a seven-page PDF that is tagged for PDF/UA-1 and checked as it is generated. There's no remediation step afterwards.
The PDF holds a table of contents, the order itself, and a Construction Project Services and Installation Agreement attached as an annex.
The 3½-minute video shows the clicks. This post goes further: what's inside the file, how it was checked, how brand colours are handled, what happens when a check fails, and what automation can't tell you.
Why this matters now
Accessible documents are moving from "nice to have" to a requirement in more places:
- US federal agencies and their suppliers work under Section 508, which applies WCAG to electronic documents, PDFs included.
- US state and local governments must make web content and documents meet WCAG 2.1 AA under the Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule, with compliance dates starting in 2026.
- Businesses selling in the EU fall under the European Accessibility Act, which has applied since 28 June 2025.
Regulated industries (healthcare, finance, government, legal) feel this first, and they are also the ones producing the most documents straight out of their ERP and CRM systems.
The usual route: export now, fix later
Most teams export a PDF first and make it accessible afterwards. They run an auto-tagger, then fix by hand whatever it got wrong, one document at a time. Each time the document is generated again, the fixing starts over.
For a one-page letter, that's manageable. For tables, long agreements and hundreds of documents a day, it gets much harder. Auto-taggers also have to guess: a bold line could be a heading or just emphasis, and a grid could be a data table or a layout trick.
The REFRACT way: tag while rendering
A REFRACT template already knows what each part of the document is: a heading, a table, a form field, a signature block. So REFRACT PDF tags the document while it renders it, from that knowledge rather than from guesses. Every render is checked, and the result is recorded with the document as evidence.
What PDF/UA-1 is. PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1) is the international standard for accessible PDF. It requires a complete structure tree (headings, lists, tables, figures with alternative text), a set language and title, and reading order that matches the meaning of the page. It is the PDF counterpart of the WCAG guidance used for web pages.
Generating the document in Business Central
From the sales order, the user opens REFRACT Platform → Process Document and chooses a template. Each template carries its own features. The same sales order can come out as:
- a standard PDF;
- a version set up for eSign;
- an accessible version tagged for PDF/UA-1.
The list view shows which features each template has. Here we pick Sales Order - Modern Accessible. One click produces one tagged PDF. The agreement at the end comes from structured content and is tagged the same way as the rest.
Nothing changes for the person clicking the button. Accessibility is a property of the template, set once by whoever designs it, not a step each user has to remember.
What's inside the file
The PDF has a structure a screen reader can follow:
- Title and language. The document title is "Order Confirmation, Sales Order: S-ORD101019", and the language is set to en-US.
- Table of contents. There are 10 entries, and each one links to its section.
- Headings. There are 25 headings, in order. Heading levels follow the page structure rather than font size. Pressing H in a screen reader moves from the table of contents to Order Details and on through the document.
- Line items. The line items are a real table, with header cells a screen reader can announce. When a table runs across pages, its header row repeats and is tagged as a header each time.
- Detail cards. The order details card is tagged as a key and value table, so a screen reader reads each label with its value, such as an order date, as a pair instead of a run of loose words.
- Signature blocks. Each signature block is its own section, saying who signs and what's required. Blank fill-in fields carry a text alternative, so a screen reader announces them instead of skipping them.
- Watermark. The confidential watermark is marked as an artifact, so it isn't read aloud.
We checked the reading order with NVDA and the PAC 2026 screen-reader preview.
Brand colours that stay readable
Templates carry their own brand colours. REFRACT uses each declared colour (header shading, row striping, secondary text) when it reaches the WCAG contrast minimum of 4.5:1 against what it is drawn on, and replaces it with a safe colour when it doesn't. Either way, validation reports which colours were used as declared and which were replaced, so a designer sees it before a customer does.
For this document, contrast passed for 216 of 216 text runs.
Proof from three checkers
REFRACT's own checks. REFRACT checks every render against PDF/UA-1. For this document it checked 285 structure elements, and every check passed with no issues found. Contrast passed for 216 of 216 text runs, and all 11 links passed.
PAC 2026. PAC reports that the PDF/UA requirements it checks are fulfilled. It counts 287 tags, two more than REFRACT's 285, because the two tools count different things: PAC counts every tag in the file, while REFRACT counts the structure elements its checks cover.
veraPDF 1.30.3, PDF/UA-1 profile. veraPDF validated the same file against 106 rules: 68,931 checks passed and 0 failed.
What happens when a check fails
A template can choose how strict it is.
- Flag (the default). The document is delivered, and the failure is recorded in the Section 508 report and on the document's timeline, so it can be fixed in the template.
- Block. A template that declares PDF/UA conformance is never delivered with a failing result. The request is refused with a clear reason, and nothing is stored or sent.
A template that declares PDF/UA can't be quietly switched back to "flag" by a single request. That keeps a promise made in the template from being undone by accident.
What automated checks can't tell you
Automated checkers cover what a machine can verify: structure, tags, language, contrast, links. They can't judge whether a heading is worded helpfully, whether alternative text actually describes the image, or whether the reading experience makes sense. We review each template with a screen reader for that, and we recommend you do the same for your own templates.
REFRACT also doesn't fix PDFs made elsewhere. It makes new documents accessible as they are generated from your data; existing PDFs still need their own remediation.
Evidence that stays with the document
The check doesn't happen once and then disappear. REFRACT Lifecycle records it on the document's timeline. The evidence package contains:
- the accessibility certificate;
- the Section 508 conformance report;
- the check-by-check trace, which includes the document hash.
All of it is stored in your own Azure tenant, and it downloads as one Section 508 package. When someone asks whether a document was accessible when it went out, the answer is already filed next to the document.
Sample outputs from Cronus demo data: the first page of the accessibility certificate and of the Section 508 conformance report that REFRACT produced for sales order S-ORD101019.
Common questions
Does this only work in Business Central? No. The same templates and checks work today with Business Central, Dynamics 365 Sales, and any app that uses the REFRACT Power Platform connector or the REFRACT API, because the tagging happens in REFRACT, not in the ERP.
Do I have to design templates differently? Templates describe content (headings, tables, cards, signature blocks) rather than drawing boxes, which is what makes tagging possible. Existing REFRACT templates switch on PDF/UA-1 as a template setting.
Is PDF/UA the same as WCAG? They overlap. PDF/UA defines how an accessible PDF is built; WCAG defines the success criteria, such as contrast. REFRACT checks both the PDF/UA structure and WCAG contrast.
Do the checks run on every document? Yes. The checks run as part of every render, not on a sample, and each result is recorded with that document.
Summary
One Business Central transaction gives you one accessible document and the evidence to show it: tagged as it renders, checked by three tools, with brand colours kept where they read, and a template-level choice of what happens if a check ever fails.
Next in the series: Signed, sealed, still accessible: the same S-ORD101019 order goes out for signature, gets sealed, and stays accessible. ▶ Watch the video
▶ Watch the 3½-minute walkthrough: https://youtu.be/ab0qK_tywno See more business processes in the REFRACT business process gallery.
Demo data: Cronus sample company. PAC 2026 and veraPDF are independent tools. We used them to confirm the result, and they aren’t part of REFRACT. The reading order was reviewed with the NVDA screen reader by Akshaya Ramidi, who completed NV Access’s Accessibility Testing with NVDA training. Refract Logic supports NV Access, the makers of NVDA.
