Michael Hannon writes:
> To proceed with this, I need to generate a series of PDF documents and have
> the boss's admin assistant try to print them. Unfortunately, I've been
> swamped with some other stuff this week and haven't had a chance to work on
> this.

Would it be possible that you first check what that error really is?
The one thing that comes to mind is that your PDF maybe references fonts
that are not available and the easiest solution would be to either
change to standard fonts or embed them in the PDF (if the license is
permitting that).

As far as I know, PDF/A-1a is not meant for universal printing, instead it is meant for accessibility. The current stock versions of pdfTeX distributed are not capable of producing accessible PDF as per PDF/A-1a specs. Main problem is that TeX does not use a space character and as such finding word boundary becomes difficult in pdf's created by pdfTeX; read aloud applications will fail to voice render PDF's by pdfTeX.

However, if the OP is happy with a PDF as per PDF/A-1b, of course, pdfx.sty distributed with TeXLive (and available at CTAN also) is capable of creating. This is for web reading and archival purposes.

If universal printing is what is wanted, then the spec to follow is PDF/X-1a. Again, pdfx.sty does help to generate this too. I think, it is not a big deal to extend pdfx package to generate pdf's compliant to later specs like PDF/X-2, 3, ... (all for printing purpose). Later specs have some advantages too like inclusion of icc color profile is not mandatory, instead url will do.

I think, orgmode can even help to create a small XMP meta file (for Dublin Core metadata compliance) needed by pdfx package while creating standards compliant PDF's which at the moment is created by pdfTeX in an unsatisfactory fashion.

Best regards