# Validate and preview (/docs/convert-pdf/validate-preview)



Before enhancing or exporting, take a moment to confirm that what you have is right. This happens in two complementary ways: **Preview** and **Validation**, both available as soon as your storyboard is built.

<Callout title="Available now, useful throughout">
  Preview and Validation aren't a one-time checkpoint — they're stages you can reopen at any point later on. What they show only reflects what's been generated so far, so a quick look now (structure and layout) is worth repeating after [Enhance your ADT](/docs/enhance) (once quizzes, captions, translations, and narration exist too) and again before you export.
</Callout>

## Preview: check it as a reader [#preview-check-it-as-a-reader]

The **Preview** stage packages what you have so far and shows it in an embedded view of the actual reader-facing ADT — not a mockup. Open it and go through the book — not as its producer, but as someone encountering it for the first time.

* Does the content read naturally, in the right order?
* Do images appear where they should?
* Does navigation work — can you move between sections easily?

While browsing the preview, a floating **Accessibility Findings** card shows a live read-out of the automated accessibility checks (see below) for the page you're on, without needing to switch to Validation.

If reviewer validation is enabled for the book, a second floating **Validation** card lets a named reviewer work through a structured checklist as they browse: open a session (reviewer name, institution, language, page range), then mark each criterion **Pass**, **Needs changes**, **N/A**, or **Not reviewed** per page, with room for a comment and a suggested fix. This is opt-in and separate from the automated checks.

## Validate: check it against accessibility standards [#validate-check-it-against-accessibility-standards]

The **Validation** stage runs an automated **Accessibility Summary**: your packaged ADT checked against WCAG, the international accessibility standard, using industry-standard tooling. It flags issues before you publish:

* Missing image descriptions
* Structural problems
* Contrast issues
* Similar accessibility barriers

Where reviewer validation is enabled, the same stage also has a **Reviewer Validation** tab summarizing every session's checklist results, so you get both machine-checked and human-checked issues in one place.

<Callout type="warn" title="This is not a formality">
  Accessibility validation **is the point of the tool**. An ADT that fails these checks is not yet doing its job for the learners who depend on it.
</Callout>

## Fix, rerun, repeat [#fix-rerun-repeat]

If validation or your own review surfaces problems, go back to the step responsible — [Sectioning](/docs/convert-pdf/sectioning) for structure issues, [Storyboard](/docs/convert-pdf/storyboard) for layout issues — fix it, and rerun. Only the affected work is redone; everything else is reused. Then revisit Validation to refresh the results against your fix.

## When you're done [#when-youre-done]

Your structure and layout are solid. Now make the book richer: [Enhance your ADT](/docs/enhance) — and remember to come back to Preview and Validation once that's done, for the full picture before you export.