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Texas State thesis accessibility requirement: what it checks and how to pass

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Texas State University. This guide quotes the school's public pages; if anything here differs from them, the school's pages win.

In short: Required for submissions from Spring 2027. August and December 2026 submissions are exempt.

The rule, in the school's words

Students who are submitting theses and dissertations in August 2026 and December 2026 are not required to check for ADA compliance. Students who are submitting theses or dissertations starting in Spring 2027 must ensure that their documents are ADA compliant per the Department of Justice.

The Graduate College provides this template as a resource but does not offer technical support or troubleshooting for LaTeX-related software issues.

What it checks

• The page doesn't list individual checks. It links Texas State's accessibility user guides.
• The LaTeX template is built for LuaLaTeX with TeX Live 2025 (or compatible) and has been verified on Overleaf, though larger projects may need a Premium subscription.
• Texas State recommends drafting with the accessibility features off, then turning tagging on once the content is final and fixing the remaining errors.

Deadlines we know

We haven't recorded Texas State's Spring 2027 dates. Check the Graduate College's thesis and dissertation pages.

Dates change; confirm them with your graduate school.

How to pass it for free

Help Texas State offers

• The template download and guide, plus Overleaf's accessible-PDF guide and the LaTeX Tagging Project's documentation and package-compatibility list, are linked from the source page.

Worth knowing

“ADA compliant” is the school's wording. We can tell you what accessibility checkers report. We can't certify legal compliance.

Do it yourself

In Word

1. Start from your school's Word template if it has one.
2. Make every heading with Word's built-in styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3), not with bold or bigger text. Use Word's own list buttons and Insert, Table of Contents.
3. Make tables with Insert, Table. Give each a header row: select the first row, then Table Properties, Row, “Repeat as header row at the top of each page”. Don't use tabs or spaces to line things up, and don't paste tables as pictures.
4. Add alt text to every figure: right-click it, then View Alt Text (or Edit Alt Text). Describe what the figure shows and why it matters. Mark purely decorative images as decorative.
5. Set the document title (File, Info, Properties, Title) and the language (Review, Language).
6. Run Review, Check Accessibility and fix what it lists.
7. Save as PDF, not Print to PDF, because printing drops the tags. On Windows: File, Save As, PDF, Options, and keep “Document structure tags for accessibility” ticked. On a Mac: File, Save As, PDF, and choose “Best for electronic distribution and accessibility”.

In LaTeX

1. Use a recent TeX Live (2025 or later; we used 2026) and compile with LuaLaTeX.
2. Put this before \documentclass. It is what we used on the LaTeX example below:

   \DocumentMetadata{
     lang=en-US,
     pdfversion=1.7,
     pdfstandard=ua-1,
     tagging=on,
     testphase={phase-III,math,title,table,firstaid}
   }

3. Give the PDF a title: \hypersetup{pdftitle={Your title}, pdfdisplaydoctitle=true}.
4. Add alt text to each figure: \includegraphics[alt={What the figure shows}]{file}.
5. Mark table header rows, for example \tagpdfsetup{table/header-rows={1}} before a table whose first row is its header.
6. Check that your packages work with tagging on the LaTeX Project's tagging status page. Some (TikZ wrappers, custom floats) need workarounds.

Check the result

• Adobe Acrobat Pro: Accessibility, Accessibility Check. Many schools check with this, and campus labs often have it.
• PAC (PDF Accessibility Checker): free, Windows only. NDSU treats it as authoritative.
• veraPDF: free and open source on every platform. It checks PDF/UA.
• Word's Check Accessibility only checks the .docx. Always check the final PDF too.

Or we fix it for you

If you'd rather not do it yourself, we fix the structure of your thesis without changing a word you wrote, and send a validator report with every order.

If Texas State's checker rejects your thesis for an item we fixed, we refund you in full. Our checks are veraPDF (PDF/UA) plus our own implementation of Acrobat's published rules, not Acrobat itself. We report what checkers say; that isn't legal advice. Guarantee details.

Some schools have rules on third-party help or AI use. Check with your advisor or graduate school first.

Checkout isn't open yet, so you pay nothing now. The first 3 requests get the fix free, in exchange for honest feedback. We won't ask for a testimonial.

Request a fix for a Texas State thesis

Sources

Checked 2026-10-29:

• LaTeX Template Guide (Texas State Graduate College)