# PDF to text

https://thedollscout.com/pdf-to-text
Published by TDS Document Scout
Updated: 2026-09-25

When to use it: When you need to reuse existing PDF text or check whether text extraction works.

What you get: Readable text grouped by page, with a local TXT download.

What to check yourself: Image-only pages need a separate OCR workflow. Extracted text may have an incorrect reading order.

Files are processed in this browser. No file upload or account required.

This is a preflight review, not a WCAG or PDF/UA certification. A detected tag or title does not prove that it is correct.

The reader parses actual PDF objects with Mozilla PDF.js. It inspects title and language metadata, the tagged-document declaration, page text, exposed structure roles and interactive fields.

Missing declarations and text-bearing pages without a structure tree are triage signals. Heading jumps, tables, forms and long documents without bookmarks are review prompts. No percentage accessibility score is calculated.

Files are limited to 20 MB each, 10 per batch and 100 MB total. Inspection covers up to 200 pages per PDF and 600 per batch. Very large text pages are capped at 100,000 characters and 2,000,000 per document. Partial results are labelled.

Text comparison aligns pages using normalized extracted text. Equal text does not prove equal layout, tags, links or images. Pages without usable text remain unknown.

Reports are generated locally. Review checkboxes record a user assertion; they are not an independent audit. Original files are never rewritten.

Do my PDFs leave my device?

No. File parsing, extracted text and comparison run in your browser. Exported reports may contain filenames and document titles; choose carefully where you share them.

Does a clean result prove accessibility?

No. These checks help you triage work. Reading order, image meaning, tables, forms and assistive-technology behavior still need review.

Can you repair scanned PDFs or missing tags?

This release checks documents and extracts existing text. It does not perform OCR, add tags or repair the original PDF. Use a suitable authoring or remediation tool, then check the exported file again.

Reference material
- W3C: PDF reading order: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/pdf/PDF3
- W3C: text alternatives in PDF: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/pdf/PDF1
- Mozilla PDF.js: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/