'Broken' text in accessibility tags

Question

I have a PDF of an infographic that I want to make accessible. I created it in Adobe Illustrator and am now editing it in Acrobat. I manually created tags for each piece of text using 'prepare for accessibility' > 'Fix reading order', marking a piece of text and choosing text/paragraph or heading. For some of these the name of the tag which is displayed next to the little bankers box symbol is broken (e.g. 'SoSommmmer-er' instead of 'Sommer').
I work on a mac so I could only test with the voice over function and it reads out the broken text.
I tried adjusting the actual text in the object properties (tags > properties > Tag) but that doesn't solve the problem, the voice over still reads the broken text.
Any suggestions how to fix that? Or a work-around?
I am even willing to re-export and do the whole manual tagging again if I knew how to prevent that problem.
Thank you, Marie-Pascale

AnandSri · Answer

Hello @Marie-Pascale26468252kmhh

I hope you are doing well, and thank you for reaching out.

The text that VoiceOver reads comes from the actual text content stream in the PDF, not from the tag name or the tag properties you edited. If the underlying text in the PDF is corrupted (e.g., due to font encoding issues during export from Illustrator), screen readers will pick up that broken text regardless of what you set in the tag properties.

Suggestions/Workarounds:

Check the Actual Text Property

In Acrobat, go to Tags panel > Right-click the tag > Properties > Content.
If the text appears broken, you need to correct the Actual Text or Alternate Text.
Add the correct text in the Actual Text field. Screen readers will prioritize this over the raw content.

Use TouchUp Reading Order Tool

Select the problematic text block.
In the TouchUp Reading Order dialog, ensure the correct role (e.g., Paragraph, Heading).
Then, manually set Alternate Text if needed.

Re-export from Illustrator with Accessibility in Mind

When exporting to PDF, use “Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities” OFF and “Create Tagged PDF” ON.
Ensure fonts are embedded, and text is not outlined—outlined text cannot be read properly.

Run Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker

Go to All Tools > Accessibility > Full Check.
This will highlight missing Actual Text or Alt Text fields.

If the corruption persists even after adding Actual Text, use Edit PDF to replace the broken text with the correct text in the content stream.

I hope these suggestion helps.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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