CommonLook PDF
AI-assisted PDF accessibility remediation in the browser or on the desktop, with PDF/UA, WCAG and HHS validation.
Jobs Accessibility Edit
Operated by Allyant
Where your files are processed
Mixed — depends on version and feature
The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: The Acrobat plug-in, Windows, The Acrobat plug-in, macOS. On their servers: The web edition. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
Genuinely mixed, so left unverified rather than guessed. The web edition is upload-based — its documented workflow is 'Step 1 Upload a PDF' to 'Step 4 Download accessible files' — and the privacy policy says documents submitted for processing are handled on servers in the United States and/or Canada. Allyant's own support guide, read 2026-09-25, settles what the desktop edition is: 'There are two versions of CommonLook PDF. The first is web-based and accessed through an internet browser. The second is a plugin to Adobe Acrobat Pro or Pro DC.' A plug-in runs inside the copy of Acrobat on the reader's own machine, which is how every other Acrobat plug-in in this index is treated, so that edition processes locally by architecture. The field stays null because the product ships in two editions with opposite answers and a single boolean would be wrong about one of them, not because the answer is unknown. uploadEndpointHost is deliberately null: it overrides every other locality signal and would wrongly label the on-premises edition as cloud-only.
What it does
CommonLook PDF is Allyant's commercial PDF remediation product: it auto-tags documents with AI, offers an advanced editor for practitioners and a simplified one for non-specialists, and validates output against PDF/UA, WCAG and HHS, attaching a downloadable validation report to each remediated file. It is sold in two editions: a browser-based application, added in July 2025, and a desktop edition that Allyant's own support documentation describes as a plugin to Adobe Acrobat Pro or Pro DC, continuing the delivery it had before the web version existed and still documented under its former name, PDF GlobalAccess. Pricing is quote-only — every call to action is a request form for a 7-day trial or a demo.
Best for: Large teams and non-technical staff who have to clear a backlog of inaccessible PDFs and want a guided, standards-mapped workflow with reports they can hand to a compliance officer, rather than a bare tag editor.
Worth knowing: Nothing is published about price: the only entry points are a request form for a 7-day trial and a demo booking, so budgeting means talking to Allyant or a reseller. The web edition is upload-based and Allyant's privacy policy puts processing and storage on servers in the United States and/or Canada, so it is not a route for confidential documents unless you establish what the desktop edition does with them. And the standards support is the vendor's claim about its checkpoints — validation against PDF/UA or WCAG is not a guarantee that a document is compliant, which still depends on human judgements the software cannot make.
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
- Web · Windows · macOS
- Website
- allyant.com
- Requires an account
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
- Watermark on trial output
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Not verified
- Data residency
- Multiple regions
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
- Not verified
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 58 ms 16 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: The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist — it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach — but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote. Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.
https://allyant.com/pdf-accessibility-software-solutions/commonlook-pdf/
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 PDF supports multiple accessibility standards, including PDF/UA, WCAG, and HHS to ensure your organization complies with laws like Section 508, ADA Title II, EAA, and others.”
Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim, and corroborated twice more on the same page: the introductory paragraph says the software enables organisations to "meet PDF compliance requirements of ADA Title II, Section 508, HHS, EAA, and others", and a feature row says a standard can be selected "including WCAG, PDF/UA, and HHS" for Section 508 compliance. Two details are worth having. The standards are named as target profiles the tool validates against, which is a narrower and more defensible thing than a claim of compliance — compliance with Section 508 or ADA Title II is an obligation on the publishing organisation, not a property a tool can have, and the page's wording keeps that distinction. And the product is now published by Allyant, with "CommonLook" retained as the product name, which matters to anyone searching for the older brand. The page also states each accessible PDF comes with a downloadable validation report listing passed, failed and warning issues. Recorded as the vendor's description; no control was run.
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
- 7c63d0fcae3b5f500072de27ab2c472f26456e41bb8e9a09f6641927bc2a5899
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://allyant.com/pdf-accessibility-software-solutions/commonlook-pdf/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-allyant-com-pdf-accessibility-software-solutions-commonloo-5eae180a.txt.
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“It's the brand that's been trusted by tens of thousands of customers for decades—built by the leaders who help write the global standards for PDF accessibility—designed for users of every ability.”
Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the sentence appears unaltered in the page's introduction. It carries three claims of different kinds and only one is verifiable. "Trusted by tens of thousands of customers for decades" is social proof with no source. "Built by the leaders who help write the global standards for PDF accessibility" is a claim about the vendor's staff that could in principle be checked against standards-body rosters and was not. "Designed for users of every ability" is the only one with a mechanism behind it anywhere on the page, and the page does document standards support and validation reporting. Recorded as the vendor's wording.
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
- 7c63d0fcae3b5f500072de27ab2c472f26456e41bb8e9a09f6641927bc2a5899
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://allyant.com/pdf-accessibility-software-solutions/commonlook-pdf/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-allyant-com-pdf-accessibility-software-solutions-commonloo-5eae180a.txt.
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.