Actuate Corporation has developed Xenos Axess, an enterprise-class solution to produce high-volumes of accessible PDF documents for the blind and partially sighted.

Actuate said Xenos Axess is ideal for organisations that consistently produce and present high-volume documents such as monthly banking, credit card or investment statements.

Xenos Axess enables organisations to transform print streams and standard PDF documents into tagged, accessible PDF documents for customers with limited or no vision who are using assistive technologies.

Robert Kugel, senior vice president of Ventana Research, said, "While there are accessibility tools that can read simple text adequately, information contained in tables, financial statements, bills, charts and photographs are far more difficult to communicate clearly and easily."

Actuate says the technology comes at a time when firms have to meet the needs of the blind. It says there are 1.8m people in the UK who are registered blind or partially sighted.

An Equality Bill - designed to replace the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK - contains a clause that could mean that websites are forced off the internet if they have poor accessibility.

Xenos Axess is currently in beta testing with a major global credit card services company. Xenos Axess will be commercially available before the end of June 2010.