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Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 7, 2026
Question

Auto-tagging fails Accessibility

  • April 7, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 21 views

Why does the Accessibility Auto-Tag make tags that fail the Accessibility Checker? Every little thing is wrapped up in TH, TR, and TD tags unnecessarily. Workarounds?

    1 reply

    Community Manager
    April 10, 2026

    Hello,


    Thanks for reaching out.
    Create a copy of the document and try the following:

    In the meantime, have you tried the Cloud-based auto-tagging feature? 

    1. Create a copy of your document

    2. Launch Acrobat > Menu > Preferences > Accessibility > Other Accessibility options

      1. Check “Enable Cloud-based auto-tagging” for accessibility

      2. Click Ok 

      3. Relaunch Acrobat (optional)

    1. Open the document > Tools > Prepare for Accessibility 

      1. Click “Automatically tag PDF.”

      2. Once done, save the document and check. 

    After you are still required to check the tags manually sometimes.


    To review Auto-Generated Tags: After the auto-tagging process, manually review the generated tags in the Tags panel to ensure that each TH (table header) and TD (table data) is correctly nested within TR (table row) tags.

     

    Correct Tag Structure: 

    Ensure that each TR is a child of Table, THead, TBody, or TFoot.

    Confirm that TH and TD elements are children of TR tags.

     

     

    Use Accessibility Check Tools: 

    Utilize the Full Check/Accessibility Check tool in Acrobat to identify specific tagging errors and accessibility issues. This tool can provide insights into why the tags may not be compliant.

    Access the tool via Tools > Accessibility > Full Check.


    Wait for more inputs from experts.



    ~Tariq

    th_4209
    Participant
    April 10, 2026

    Unfortunately the cloud-based tagging is extremely innaccurate, which causes the user to have to manually move tags in the tag tree, which then causes the app to crash.  This is clearly a programming issue and we would just like your company to fix it. It’s been eight days since the latest faulty update, and it seems there’s an issue with each update you’ve sent out.  Your app is almost completely unusable for accessibility tagging at this point. I’ve received instructions on how to collect and submit a crash log, which I will be doing, but the updates should have been tested before the roll out.  I will be suggesting our department uses a different software as this is completely unacceptable with the Title II deadline looming.