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Participant
June 11, 2020
Question

Accessibility checker fails artifact as decorative image

  • June 11, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 6588 views

Hi! 

 

I have marked a few images in my document as "decorative" hence making them artifacts. When I run the accessibility checker it gives me errors for my artifacts: "Alternate text for other objects - fail".

 

What should I do? As I understand it an image/figure which is marked alternate text=decorative is automatically made into an artifact. And an artifact can't by design have a "real" alternate text. Right?

 

Regards,

Jesper

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1 reply

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
June 11, 2020

Quote: "As I understand it an image/figure which is marked alternate text=decorative is automatically made into an artifact."

 

Yes, it should automatically be artifacted. But there are several things that could have gone wrong. See below.

 

Quote: "And an artifact can't by design have a "real" alternate text. Right?"

 

Yes, that's correct. No Alt-text on artifacts. All artifacts should be hidden to all assistive technologies.

 

We need a few more details to diagnose what happened.

  • At what point in the workflow are you designating something as decorative/artifact?
    • Are you doing this in Acrobat? If so, what version of Acrobat, on what platform, and with which Acrobat tool?
    • Are you doing this in the source program, such as MS Word? If so, what version & platform, and with which tool in that source program?
  • What accessibility checker are you using? Acrobat's internal accessibility checker? Some other program?
  • How was the PDF made and with which tool? For example:
    • Export from Word using Adobe's PDF Maker plug-in (the Acrobat Ribbon).
    • Save As / PDF using Microsoft's built-in PDF converter?

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
Participant
June 23, 2020

Hi Bevi, 

Thanks for your reply!

 

Here are my answers to your questions:

1. Am doing this in Acrobat Pro DC (version .20067) on Mac Catalina 10.15.4.

2. I am doing this in the pdf-file. I think it was once converted to pdf from Word. I am not sure.

3. I am using the checker in Acrobat Pro.

4. Where in the workflow: As almost the last thing after autotagging and correcting the tags.

 

I hope this info helps.

 

Regards,

Jesper

a_C_student16379412
Inspiring
June 25, 2020

Hi Jesper, I would try ...

Use the Reading Order tool, select the misbehaving content element, and "Tag as background/artifact".

Or, in the Content Pane, drag the content element out of whatever container it is in, if any, right-click it and "Create Artifact".

Hope this helps. If not, please post.