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UIUC thesis accessibility requirement: what it checks and how to pass

Not affiliated with or endorsed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This guide quotes the school's public pages; if anything here differs from them, the school's pages win.

In short: Encouraged now, required from the Spring 2027 deposit period, along with a source-file upload.

The rule, in the school's words

While we encourage students to incorporate these accessibility standards, they will become required beginning with the Spring 2027 deposit period.

Beginning with the Spring 2027 deposit period, students will be required to upload a source file (such as a Word document or LaTeX files) along with their submission.

What it checks

• Alt text for all figures and illustrative materials.
• Tables with a row and/or column header and a simple structure.
• Heading styles that tell heading levels apart.
• Formatting changes from Spring 2026, made to fit accessibility standards: no Roman-numeral page numbers, only chapter and first-level headings in the table of contents, no List of Figures or List of Tables without an agreed exception, no fully justified text, and no scanned documents.

Deadlines we know

We haven't recorded Illinois's deposit dates. The Graduate College's deposit process page (linked from the source page) has them.

Dates change; confirm them with your graduate school.

How to pass it for free

Help UIUC offers

• The Graduate College's Word and LaTeX templates already include the revised formatting.
• CITL publishes Word and PDF accessibility guides and runs Quick Start workshops, and the Thesis Office answers questions.

Worth knowing

Because Illinois will also ask for your source file, fix the source (your .docx or .tex), not just the PDF, so the two match. That is how we work: every change goes into your source file.

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 UIUC'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 UIUC thesis

Sources

Checked 2026-10-29:

• Thesis Updates for Digital Accessibility (Illinois Graduate College)