Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures (ESI); PDF Advanced Electronic Signature Profiles; Part 6: Visual Representations of Electronic Signatures (V1.1.1)
The present document specifies requirements and recommendations for the visual representations of advanced electronic signatures (AdES) in PDFs. This covers: a) Signature appearance: The visual representation of the human act of signing placed within a PDF document at signing time and linked to an advanced electronic signature; and b) Signature verification representation: The visual representation of the verification of an advanced electronic signature. The aim of the present document is to provide requirements and recommendations for signature appearances and the visual representation of advanced electronic signatures. This is particularly aimed to help the untrained human understanding of the signature and to further consistency between the signature appearance and the visual representations of the AdES verification in order to help human comparison. The present document includes further explanation of the two different visual representations of electronic signatures related to PDF. The present document does not cover printable forms of signature values (e.g. using barcodes) which may be verifiable from the printed document. NOTE: This use of printable forms of signature value is to be covered in a separate report.