# Is Your Proposal PDF Searchable? The Flattened-Page Test > A project sheet or resume saved as an image has no text an evaluator can search, copy, or hear read aloud. A five-minute test, the usual causes, and the fix. _By Oswald B. · Published 2026-09-23_ A searchable proposal PDF contains real text that an evaluator can select, search, copy, and have read aloud. A flattened page is a picture of text: it looks identical on screen, but the words aren't there. In AEC submittals, the page most often flattened is the project sheet, which is also the page designed with the most care. ## How Do You Tell If a PDF Is Flattened? Open the PDF your firm last submitted and try to select a sentence of body text with your cursor. If the text highlights word by word, it is real text. If a box selects the whole page at once, or nothing highlights at all, the page is an image. Then press Ctrl+F and search for the name of a key person on that page. No hit means an evaluator searching your submittal gets no hit either. Run both checks on a project sheet, a resume, the org chart, and one appendix page. That is five minutes, and it tells you more than a general accessibility audit would. ## Why Does a Flattened Page Matter to an Evaluator? Evaluators read your SOQ on a screen, often next to a scoring sheet, and they work with the text in a few ways that a flattened page stops cold. - **Search.** A reviewer looking for the resident engineer's name or a specific interchange project uses Ctrl+F. An image returns nothing. - **Copy.** Pulling a project description or a years-of-experience line into a score sheet or a memo fails. - **Listen.** To a screen reader, an image-only page is blank. WCAG, the standard public agencies point to, says text should be used "rather than images of text" ([Success Criterion 1.4.5](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/images-of-text.html)). Some agencies now say it outright. A 2025 RFQ from the City of Victor, Idaho, for wastewater treatment plant design asked that submissions be "a single electronic file in [searchable PDF format](https://victoridaho.gov/news/rfq-wastewater-treatment-plant), ideally smaller than 10 MB." Agencies subject to the [ADA Title II accessibility rule](/blog/ada-title-ii-proposal-documents) have a further reason to care, because a document they post has to be accessible. ## What Causes a Flattened Project Sheet? Nobody decides to flatten a page. It happens on the way from the design file to the submittal. | How it happens | Where you see it | | ----------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- | | Page exported as JPG or PNG, then placed into the SOQ | Project sheets, cover pages | | Printed to PDF with "print as image" turned on | Whole submittals, to "fix" a print bug | | Text converted to outlines to avoid font problems | Designed pages from a graphics tool | | Screenshot pasted in place of the original | Org charts, schedules, tables | | Paper document scanned and appended | Licenses, certifications, DBE letters | The first row is the common one. A graphics team lays out [project experience sheets](/blog/project-experience-sheets) for the website or a brochure, exports them as images, and the images get reused in proposals because they look right. They just contain no words. ## How Do You Fix a Flattened PDF? There are two fixes, and only one of them lasts. 1. **Patch the file.** Acrobat Pro's Accessibility Checker has an "Image-only PDF" rule that flags pages with no text, and its Recognize Text (OCR) tool adds a text layer. That rescues a scanned certificate. On a designed project sheet, OCR misreads small type, tables, and captions, and it adds no reading order or headings, so check it before you trust it. 2. **Fix the export.** Go back to the source file and export to PDF directly, with live text. Stop placing image exports into SOQs. Keep scans for documents that only exist on paper. The second fix is a template decision, which is why it lasts. If the project sheet comes from a source that exports real text, every future submittal inherits that. ## Is This the Same Problem as an Inherited Template? Related, but not the same. [An inherited go-by file](/blog/nobody-chose-your-proposal-template) is about whether anyone at your firm understands the source file and why it's set up the way it is. This test is about the output: whether what leaves your firm can be read by software at all. A firm can have a perfectly documented template and still flatten every page on export. The fix for this one is five minutes of checking and one changed export habit. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is a flattened PDF? In proposal work, a flattened PDF usually means pages that were turned into images, so the text became part of a picture. It looks the same on screen but has no selectable or searchable text. Acrobat also uses "flatten" for merging form fields and comments into a page, which keeps the text searchable. ### How can I make a scanned PDF searchable? Run optical character recognition. In Acrobat Pro, the Recognize Text tool adds a text layer to scanned pages. It works well on clean, simple documents like certificates and licenses. Check the result on designed pages, since OCR often misreads small type, tables, and captions. ### Do agencies require searchable PDFs for SOQs? Some say so in the solicitation, usually in the submittal format section. Read that section on every RFQ. Even when it isn't required, evaluators search and copy from your PDF, and agencies covered by accessibility rules have to post accessible documents. ### Does a searchable PDF mean the document is accessible? No. Real text is the first requirement, not the whole list. An accessible PDF also needs tagged headings, a set reading order, alternative text for images, and table headers. But a page with no text fails everything else automatically, so it is the check to run first. --- Canonical HTML: https://rfpm.ai/blog/searchable-pdf-proposal-test · Site overview: https://rfpm.ai/llms.txt · Sitemap: https://rfpm.ai/sitemap.xml