CommonLook Office
Windows add-in that generates accessible PDFs from Word and PowerPoint and walks the author through the checkpoints.
Jobs Accessibility
Operated by Allyant
Opens the vendor's own site.
Jobs covered
Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.
Accessibility
Browse all accessibility toolsgenerating accessible PDFs from Microsoft Word (doc, docx) and PowerPoint (ppt, pptx) documents with CommonLook Office, which guides the author through accessibility checkpoints before the PDF is generated, maps Word styles to PDF tags, tags simple complex and presentation-style tables, and verifies the result against Section 508, HHS, WCAG or PDF/UA
Where your files are processed
No server involved
Windows add-in for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. The document is authored and tagged on the workstation through Office's own interface, so there is no service for the file to be sent to. Installation activates a product key over the internet, but that is licensing rather than document processing.
The document is authored in Word or PowerPoint on the workstation and the add-in produces the PDF from it, so the content does not have to be sent anywhere to be tagged. Activation is the exception: installation requires a product key registered over the internet or by email, which contacts the vendor's licensing server.
That is a licence check rather than document processing and the two should not be confused. No page read states what, if anything, the software sends during normal use, so this is recorded as true on the documented workflow - an add-in operating on a local file - and not on an explicit statement about network traffic.
What it does
CommonLook Office is Allyant's authoring-side product: an add-in for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint that collects accessibility information while the document is being written and then generates a tagged PDF from it. It is the counterpart to CommonLook PDF, which repairs documents after the fact - this one tries to stop the problem being created, checking style-to-tag mapping, table structure and the other checkpoints against Section 508, HHS, WCAG and PDF/UA before a PDF exists.
It is a Windows add-in installed from an executable and activated with a product key, which is the opposite of the direction CommonLook PDF took in July 2025.
Best for
Teams that author their own documents in Word or PowerPoint and would rather the accessible version came out of the authoring tool than be retrofitted afterwards. It is the right shape when you hold the source files and can ask the people creating them to work through a checkpoint pass, and the wrong tool entirely when all you receive is a finished PDF from someone else - which is the situation CommonLook PDF exists for.
Worth knowing
There is no published price and no self-service path: every call to action on the product page is a demo booking, so budgeting means contacting Allyant or a reseller. It is Windows-only and needs the source documents.
The installation manual requires Windows 10 or later with Word 2010 or later, and PowerPoint 2010 or later if you use it, so a Mac-based team cannot run it at all. Installation is an executable that needs a ten-digit product key and activation over the internet or by email, making it a managed deployment rather than an install-and-go.
Most importantly, the verification language is the vendor's claim about its own checkpoints: the page says the software offers "complete verification, covering all conformance criteria for your chosen accessibility standard". That is a guided process rather than an unattended pass: the workflow collects accessibility information from the author and walks them through checkpoints, so manual judgement is part of it and the claim is not the same as an automated certification.
What remains specific to the automated portion is that a checkpoint passing cannot judge whether alternative text actually describes its image or whether the reading order makes sense, which is the part a person still has to settle. The add-in is installed software, and the record found no explicit vendor statement about what it transmits during normal use, so nothing is claimed about that either way.
Details, and where each comes from
Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.
- Versions covered
- Windows
- Website
- allyant.com
- Requires an account
- Not verified
- Free tier
- Not verified
- Watermark on the free tier
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Not verified
- Data residency
- Not verified
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
-
Commercial, quoted rather than published
Commercial, quoted rather than published; a per-seat add-in installed from an executable and activated with a product key
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 200 ms 21 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
What the redaction verdict rests on
From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.
What that does not establish
Recorded as `none` on absence, and structurally: this is an authoring tool for the PDF rather than an operation performed on a finished one. It converts Word and PowerPoint documents into tagged PDFs and guides the author through accessibility checkpoints - style mapping, table tagging, alternative text - and nothing in the feature list removes content from a document that already exists.
What it does not establish: anything about CommonLook PDF, the sibling product, which is a separate record with its own evidence, or about whether the add-in's editor can delete content during authoring, which is not the same thing as a redaction feature.
https://allyant.com/pdf-accessibility-software-solutions/commonlook-office/
What the vendor says
Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.
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“CommonLook Office offers complete verification, covering all conformance criteria for your chosen accessibility standard.”
Checked by us - could not be settled Read 22 September 2026
Present verbatim in the feature list as "Complete Verification: CommonLook Office offers complete verification, covering all conformance criteria for your chosen accessibility standard." The wording is the vendor's and is recorded because of what it implies rather than because it was misquoted. "Complete" and "all conformance criteria" are the strongest form of this claim in the index, and the accessibility guide exists precisely because a software pass cannot cover conformance criteria that turn on human judgement - whether alternative text is accurate, whether a reading order is sensible, whether a table's header relationships match what the table means.
The same page's own compliance row is more measured, saying the software lets you "conform to leading accessibility standards", which is a statement about target profiles rather than about outcomes. Two sentences on one page, one of them defensible.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- bc91ff1abb59980a4c21f951f60ac4b3b97e0182857d6bf6dda1084e6431f27a
How we checked
https://allyant.com/pdf-accessibility-software-solutions/commonlook-office/ rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs on 2026-09-22 (visible text 2741 bytes) and the claim checked against that rendered text. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of that text.
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“With CommonLook Office, you can effortlessly generate compliant PDF files from Microsoft Word (doc, docx) and PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX) documents.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed as a description of function, and the input formats are corroborated by the installation manual, whose system requirements name Word 2010 or later and PowerPoint 2010 or later ("not required if working exclusively in Word"). The word doing the work is "compliant": the software targets compliance with a chosen standard, which the same page describes as guiding the user through checkpoints and producing output against PDF/UA, WCAG, Section 508 or HHS.
Reporting that as a compliance outcome would overstate it in exactly the way this index tries not to.
Standing: Re-read, and the recorded hash was not reproduced
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- bc91ff1abb59980a4c21f951f60ac4b3b97e0182857d6bf6dda1084e6431f27a
- Note
- neither the raw response nor a render reproduced the recorded hash (63343 chars, recorded bc91ff1abb…)
How we checked
Same rendered page and hash as the claim above; the file formats were cross-checked against the installation manual at https://manuals.commonlook.com/resources/manuals/installing-commonlook-office/, rendered the same day (visible text 4334 bytes).
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“What sets CommonLook Office apart is its ability to surpass the native accessible PDF functionality found in Microsoft Office.”
Checked by us - could not be settled Read 22 September 2026
Recorded verbatim. This is the one claim on the page that cannot be settled by reading the vendor's own material: "surpasses" is a comparison against Microsoft's built-in accessibility checker, no criteria are given, and nothing on the page describes a test of both.
The plausibility is real - a dedicated checkpoint walkthrough with style-to-tag mapping is a different thing from Office's checker - but the index does not record plausibility as a finding, and the reader is better served by knowing the comparison is asserted rather than demonstrated.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- bc91ff1abb59980a4c21f951f60ac4b3b97e0182857d6bf6dda1084e6431f27a
How we checked
Same rendered page and hash as the first claim; the claim is a comparative one, so the check was whether the page supports the comparison rather than whether the wording is present - it is present, and the page offers nothing beyond the assertion to support it.
Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.
Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.
Related reading
- Checking a PDF for accessibility - what makes a PDF accessible, and how it is checked.
- Which PDF tools keep your file on your machine - what we count as processing on your own device.