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alextdel
Participant
June 19, 2023
Question

Acrobat accessibility tags ignored

  • June 19, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 434 views

I am trying to create an accessible help document (3 pages) with screenshots, text and bullet lists showing steps. I have spent about 30 hours on this one document.

Within Adobe Acrobat I have found that ...
1. Autotagging bunches several items together and even includes paragraphs and bullet lists of text in a collection it calls a Figure
2. Bullet lists are frequently tagged as span elements or paragraphs etc
3. Several elements I cannot tag them as Figures or Headings - I select the item and choose say H2 and the selection clears and nothing happens. I have tried reimporting images and creating new text but the selection and tagging will not work.

Would you say the only way for Adobe to correctly tag is with a document created in a wordprocessor with all text and graphics simply in line?

Any comment or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
    Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
    Legend
    June 19, 2023

    The  artificial intelligence in Acrobat to automatically turn a PDF into an accessible tagged PDF is a work in progress. It's not that intelligent at this stage, but will improve in the future. The errors you found are very common.

     

    Today — and I expect this to be true well into the future, AI or no AI — is to build an accessible source file, that is, an accessible, correctly styled and structure MS Word document (or PowerPoint, Excel, Adobe InDesign, etc.). And then export the PDF from Word. If done well in Word, the exported PDF should be 85-90% accessible and require just a small amount of tweaking in Acrobat Pro to polish it off.

     

    Get training in how to do this in Word — it's not tough to do, but it does require at least a couple hours of training in the basics. Some of the most critical tasks are:

    • Avoid all manual formatting and use Word's built-in styles to both format the document as well as designate which tag to use in the PDF.
      • Title = Heading 1
      • Subheads = Heading 2 through 6
      • Italics = Emphasis character style
      • Bold = Strong chraracter style
    • Put Alt Text on every graphic, or designate it as artifact/decorative.
    • Use Word's TOC utility to create a Table of Contents (required if the document is 10 pages or longer)
    • Use Word's footnote utility to add footnotes (if needed).
    • Use either Adobe PDF Maker or the Microsoft PDF export utilities with the correct accessibility settings to generate the final PDF. Details are in this free tutorial https://www.pubcom.com/blog/tutorials/ms-office/export-pdf/index.shtml
    • And check the PDF's compliance with Acrobat and any other 3rd party checkers you prefer.

     

    |    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
      A
      Alex Delaforce
      Participant
      June 28, 2023

      Thanks Bevi Chagnon, great tips. I think I have been slowly discovering your list, so I appreciate your task list. Part of using Acrobat has been learning what not to do - especially with the reading order tool which really messes with tag order.

      Thanks for the link to the tutorial - I'm checking this out as soon as I hit send on this.

      Thanks again

      Alex

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