PDF/UA-1 · CLAUSE 7.21.3.1
Font is not embedded or is inconsistently encoded
A font used for rendering is not embedded, is missing glyphs, or has encoding tables that do not let a reader map character codes to glyphs reliably.
Why it matters
Text may render with substituted glyphs, and text extraction can produce wrong characters, so both sighted readers and screen reader users can get corrupted text.
How to fix it
- Embed all fonts, including subsets, when exporting the PDF.
- Avoid fonts with broken or missing cmap tables; substitute a well-formed font in the source document.
- Check the export preset: 'optimised for size' presets often drop font embedding.
What the standard says
For any given composite (Type 0) font within a conforming file, the CIDSystemInfo entry in its CIDFont dictionary and its Encoding dictionary shall have the following relationship: - If the Encoding key in the Type 0 font dictionary is Identity-H or Identity-V, any values of Registry, Ordering, and Supplement may be used in the CIDSystemInfo entry of the CIDFont. - Otherwise, the corresponding Registry and Ordering strings in both CIDSystemInfo dictionaries shall be identical, and the value of the Supplement key in the CIDSystemInfo dictionary of the CIDFont shall be less than or equal to the Supplement key in the CIDSystemInfo dictionary of the CMap
Check your own PDF
Validate a file against PDF/UA-1 and see whether this rule fails in your document.
curl -sS -X POST "https://api.ua1.dev/api/validate?format=compact&profile=ua1" \ -F "file=@document.pdf"