Beyond Web Pages: How Beacon Now Scans PDFs and Office Documents

When you run an accessibility scan on your website, what happens to that PDF policy document? Or the Excel spreadsheet linked from your resources page? Or the PowerPoint presentation in your news section?

For most accessibility tools, the answer is: nothing. They scan the HTML, miss the documents entirely, and leave your compliance blindfolded.

We fixed that.

Beacon now automatically discovers and scans every PDF, Word document, Excel spreadsheet, and PowerPoint presentation on your website—right alongside your web pages. One scan. Complete coverage. No manual uploads. No separate tools.

The Hidden Compliance Gap

Here's what most organizations don't realize: accessibility compliance covers everything. The ADA, Section 508, and EN 301 549 don't make exceptions for documents. If a file is on your website, it needs to be accessible.

Yet documents are everywhere. Policy documents, annual reports, tax forms, research papers, educational materials, presentations, data sheets—they're all sitting on your site, and most of them have never been checked for accessibility.

A PDF with missing alt text on images. An Excel file with no header row labels. A PowerPoint with text too small to read. A Word document with no meaningful heading structure. These aren't edge cases. They're the norm.

And when someone using a screen reader, keyboard navigation, or magnification tools tries to access them? They can't.

Beacon's document scanning fills that gap. When you run a web scan, our system automatically crawls your site, finds all documents, and validates them against accessibility standards.

What Gets Checked (And Why It Matters)

PDFs: The Gold Standard

We validate PDFs against PDF/UA-1, the international accessibility standard for portable documents. That's 136 specific checks mapped through the Matterhorn Protocol—the definitive guide for PDF accessibility compliance.

We catch issues like:

• Missing or incorrect alternative text for images and graphics
• Improper heading hierarchy and reading order
• Untagged content that screen readers can't interpret
• Color contrast problems
• Missing form labels and field descriptions
• Inaccessible tables with missing headers

Every issue comes with guidance on exactly what to fix, and you can re-scan documents individually after remediation.

Word Documents (DOCX)

Microsoft Word is still one of the most common formats for business documents. Yet creating an accessible Word document requires knowledge most authors don't have.

We check for 20 accessibility issues, including:

• Proper heading structure and hierarchy
• Alternative text for images and shapes
• Table headers and data structure
• Form field labels and instructions
• Color contrast for text readability
• Document language settings
• Meaningful hyperlink text

Excel Spreadsheets (XLSX)

Spreadsheets might look organized to a sighted user, but to a screen reader, they're chaotic without proper markup. We validate 14 critical checks:

• Sheet names that describe content
• Table headers and column identification
• Merged cells (a common accessibility blocker)
• Named ranges for complex data
• Chart descriptions and alt text
• Color not used as the only way to convey information
• Proper number and currency formatting

PowerPoint Presentations (PPTX)

Presentations are often treated as secondary content, but they're core to many organizations' communication. We scan 18 accessibility criteria:

• Slide titles that describe each slide's content
• Proper reading order (the sequence screen readers follow)
• Alt text for images, charts, and graphs
• Animations that don't interfere with readability
• Media captions and audio descriptions
• Color contrast and font size requirements
• Master slide proper formatting

Why Automatic Discovery Matters

You could manually upload documents for scanning. Many accessibility platforms ask you to. But that requires:

1. Knowing every document exists
2. Downloading each one manually
3. Uploading them individually
4. Re-uploading when they're updated
5. Manually tracking which versions were scanned

We handle this automatically. When you run a website scan, Beacon crawls your site exactly like a user would, discovers every linked document, and validates it—no extra work from you.

Found a typo in your PDF? Updated your policy document? Launched a new PowerPoint template? The next scan catches it automatically.

Everything Maps to WCAG

Every issue we find maps to a specific WCAG 2.1 success criterion. You'll know exactly which compliance standards each document violates, at which level (A, AA, or AAA), and what the real-world impact is.

A missing image description? WCAG 1.1.1. Improper heading hierarchy? WCAG 2.4.6. Color contrast issues? WCAG 1.4.3. This clarity helps your team understand priorities and focus remediation efforts where they matter most.

Document Scanning on Every Plan

We didn't hide this behind an enterprise paywall. Document scanning is included on all Beacon plans:

• Free plan: 5 documents per scan
• Starter plan: 25 documents per scan
• Professional plan: 100 documents per scan
• Enterprise plan: Unlimited documents

Whether you're running a small organization or managing hundreds of documents across a large website, there's a plan that fits.

The Full Picture, Finally

For too long, "accessibility scanning" meant "HTML scanning only." Organizations checked their web pages and assumed they were compliant, never realizing they had hundreds of inaccessible documents sitting right there on their site.

Beacon changes that. One platform. One scan. Complete coverage. Your web pages, your PDFs, your Word documents, your spreadsheets, your presentations—all validated, all mapped to WCAG, all with actionable remediation guidance.

It's the way accessibility scanning should have always worked.

Start Your First Scan

Ready to see what documents are hiding on your website? Sign up for Beacon today and run your first scan. Discover every accessibility issue across your entire digital presence—pages and documents alike.

Accessibility isn't a web problem. It's a content problem. And now, Beacon handles all of it.