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Bengt29499497xi2i
Participant
April 20, 2023
Question

My tagtree doesnt agree with reading order?

  • April 20, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 3123 views

I am wondering if recent update made any changes that make my acrobat reading order to become faulty.

 

1 reply

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
April 20, 2023

Your preferences for how to view the Order panel were changed. Reset them:

  1. From the Order panel's drop-down menu (the square menu next to the circled I), UNcheck the option to Display Like Elements in a Single Box.
  2. Then, choose how you want to view the items on the right side: from the drop-down menu, choose either:
    — Show Page Content Groups: Page Content Order (numbered), or
    — Structure Types (what you see now in your screen capture).

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
B
Bengt29499497xi2iAuthor
Participant
April 20, 2023

Let me rephrase that. The tags tree structure type doesnt is the same as the structure type in the reading order.... a <H1> in the tag tree is a <P> in the reading order?

 

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
April 24, 2023

Do you mean that i cannot trust that Adobe acrobat cannot be trusted showing the right reading order....
How can i know that this dokument will work with screenreaders? Since they rely on a correct reading order.

I need to know that my dokument is accessible.


This thread is confusing the different reading orders in a PDF. Hopefully, this can help clear up the misunderstanding.

 

There are 4 reading orders in a PDF: See blog at https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_08-18_ReadingOrder/reading-orders.shtml

 

The PDF/UA-1 accessibility standard requires only the TAG reading order be logical — that's the order of the <Tags> in the tag tree panel. Because you can see the order of the tags in the tag tree, no software program is required to "test" it. Trust your eyes and "walk down the tag tree" with your down-arrow key.

 

To do this: Select the first tag in the tag tree. Note what is highlighted in bright pink on the page: that's the first item a screen reader will voice. Then, use the down-arrow key on your keyboard to go to the next tag, and the next one, etc. This method highlights the order in which the content will be voiced with a screen reader.

 

Most assistive technologies use the TAG reading order to present or voice the information to the user, especially screen readers.

 

The other reading order being discussed in this thread is what you see in the Order panel — which really is misnamed by Adobe and causes so much confusion, especially to those who are beginning in the industry.

 

It shows the order of the actual live content that's written in the PDF's code:  this is different from the tags, which really are just labels on the content. Because it's based on the actual code of the file, it is the original order of all PDFs and used to be called the Architectural reading order.

 

Although this order is not required to be "logical" per the PDF/UA-1 standard (and not needed by screen readers), it's a very good practice to make it logical because other assistive technologies use it, especially many free utilities used by the general public.

 

Its order doesn't need to exactly match the tag tree's order, as long as it's logical, page by page.

 

It's a shame Adobe renamed that panel THE Order panel — it's so confusing!

 

Summary: use your eyes to see the TAG reading order and the Architectural reading order.

  • "Walk" down the tag tree to check what most screen readers and modern assistive technologies will see/hear.
  • And check the numerical order in the Architectural order panel because this is what other technologies will see.

 

|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bevi Chagnon &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;Designer, Trainer, &amp; Technologist for Accessible Documents ||&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PubCom |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Classes &amp; Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs &amp; MS Office |
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