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Accessible Technology

Little Forest: PDF Remediation Tool

Little Forest is a new tool that helps remediate inaccessible documents by adding tags and alternative text (alt text) to high-priority PDFs.

Important: The initial use of this tool is prioritized for academic course content PDF remediation to prioritize the student experience. It is not yet approved for use in UW Medicine, including the School of Medicine.

Things to know before you start

1. When possible, use accessibly sourced documents instead of remediating in Little Forest.

  • If you saved to PDF a file you created in Word, PowerPoint or another tool, it is simpler to make the original file accessible and share in the original format.
  • If your PDF is an article from UW Libraries, check first that there isn’t an accessible (HTML) alternative available.
  • Little Forest leverages AI for automation. Please see the section below NOTE: Little Forest uses Artificial Intelligence for more details.
  • If there is no easy way to make the file accessible, Little Forest can help.

2. What Little Forest can do – tagging and adding alt text.

Tagging: PDFs must be “tagged” to be accessible. PDF tags define the structure of the document for headings, lists, and tables. Some document authoring tools don’t create tags. Even tools that export to tagged PDFs like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint require diligence from the author to ensure content tags are correct. Little Forest helps by adding appropriate tags.

Alt text: Alternative text is a short description of document images or graphics for screen reader users.  Little Forest auto-generates suggested alt text that you can then edit for accuracy.

3. What Little Forest can’t do – tool limitations:

  1. It’s not perfect. Little Forest can add tags (headers, lists, tables, etc.) and alt text but automation is imperfect. The remediated PDF produced by this tool may require manual remediation.
  2. It cannot remediate PDF forms. Document-based forms have complex structures that are beyond the scope of this tool to remediate. Recommendations for PDF forms will be forthcoming.
  3. It cannot make equations accessible in PDFs. This tool does not currently have the capacity to remediate equations. Recommendations for publishing accessible equations will be published soon.

4. Important: Little Forest will override any past remediation.

Little Forest will not preserve previously remediated tags or alt text. If PDFs are already tagged with headings, lists, tables, etc., or if alt text has already been added to images, Little Forest will replace the existing tags with new ones.

Step-by-step Little Forest guide

Step 1. Login to Little Forest.

Step 2. Upload a PDF to remediate

After logging in, you will land on the “PDF Remediation Workflows” page.

  • Click the “New Workflow” button near the top right corner of the page which opens a “Start PDF Remediation Workflow” dialog box.
  • Name your workflow in the “Workflow Name” field. This name will appear in a sortable column in the “My Workflows” table, so keep this in mind when coming up with a naming convention.
  • Assign a Reviewer (optional): Little Forest auto-generates alt text that should be reviewed by someone who understands the content. To review it yourself, leave this field blank. To assign this task to someone else, enter their UW email address in the field. If they appear in the drop-down list, select their name. If they don’t appear in the list, continue typing their full email address and click the “Add” button to send them an invitation.
  • Upload the PDF that you want to remediate.
  • Click the “Start Workflow” button. Expect to wait several minutes or more, depending on the number of pages.

Step 3. Review the suggested alt text for images.

Check the suggested alt text for accuracy. If you assigned a Reviewer, they will receive an email with a link to login and a prompt to access the workflow page for their assigned PDF.

  • Click the “Review Images” button. This will open a “Review Alt Text” dialog box with a thumbnail of each image along with recommended alt text.
  • Edit the recommended alt text as needed. Good alt text briefly conveys the essential information or purpose of an image in context so that someone who can’t see it receives the same essential information as a sighted user.
  • Click the “Mark as Decorative” button if the image is purely decorative to hide the image from screen readers.
  • Click the “Submit Corrections” button after reviewing and editing all images, Little Forest will reprocess the PDF with your corrections.
  • When it is finished, click the “Mark Review Complete” button that will appear on the workflow page.

Step 4. Review scores, consider next steps.

The “Accessibility Analysis” section of the workflow page contains three scores:

  1. An Accessibility Score before processing – the accessibility of your original document
  2. An Accessibility Score after processing – the updated “Score (After AI)” shows the accessibility of your document
  3. A Confidence Score – an indication of how confident Little Forest is that the remediated PDF meets accessibility requirements.

For Spring 2026, we’re aiming for scores above 85% for both the Accessibility Score after processing – the “Score (After AI)” – and the Confidence Score.  If both scores are 85% or better:

  • Click the “Download Corrected” button near the top of the page to download the final PDF from Little Forest.

If either of these two scores is less than 85%, the PDF needs further remediation and you can move on to Step 5.

The tool is improving, and we want to learn about accessibility issues that cannot currently be resolved. Watch for updates, let us know if you notice anything inaccessible that you haven’t been able to fix, and encourage students to report any accessibility barriers they may find.

Step 5. Pursue further remediation if your scores are under 85%.

If either your “Score (After AI)” or your “Confidence Score” are under 85%, you have two options for pursuing additional remediation.

Option 1: Remediate remaining identified issues

If you have the skills to remediate PDFs and a license to Adobe Acrobat Pro or another tool, the work already performed by Little Forest make this process easier. This option may be quicker than Option 2 but requires specialized knowledge.

  • Click the “Download Corrected” button near the top of the page to download the final PDF from Little Forest.

The “AI Summary” section of the Little Forest page includes “Factors Affecting Confidence,” a detailed list of issues and recommendations that can be helpful if you are remediating the PDF yourself.

Option 2: Submit request for assistance to remediate identified issues

If you do not have the skills to remediate PDFs or a license to Adobe Acrobat Pro or another tool, submit your PDF for further remediation. Requests are handled by UWIT and estimated to take two or more weeks. Response times will vary depending on the number and complexity of requests.

  • Click the “Submit for Human Review” button in the Actions section of the workflow page. This will send a request to the UWIT Document Remediation Service.
  • Documents are added to the queue in the order received.
  • Trained staff will complete the final remediation, upload the final remediated document to Little Forest, and mark the workflow as complete.
  • You will receive an email notification with a link to Little Forest.
  • Download the final PDF by clicking the “Download Final PDF” button on the Little Forest workflow page.

NOTE: Little Forest uses Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Little Forest uses AI to assist in generating accessibility tags and alternative text for PDFs as part of the document remediation process. The vendor has agreed to all applicable UW Terms and Conditions, including the UW Data Processing Agreement (DPA) and Security Rider. Little Forest has provided the following assurances regarding the handling of UW data and the use of AI:

  • No UW PDFs uploaded to Little Forest are used for training their AI. Their AI is trained exclusively on publicly available PDFs from other sources.
  • All data is stored in the United States using encrypted storage systems with restricted access and regular security audits.
  • Processing occurs in secure, isolated environments with comprehensive access controls and monitoring.
  • All data transfers use industry-standard encryption protocols to ensure secure transmission between systems.
  • The UW has full control of Little Forest’s data retention policy. They align retention with our requirements. By default, both the original and remediated versions of all PDFs are only retained for 30 days and are then deleted.

Additional resources

See the following resources for additional information about PDF accessibility: