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Participating Frequently
October 9, 2018
Question

Reading Order Tool doesn't work consistently

  • October 9, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 4853 views

I am using the most recent desktop Acrobat DC (update within the past week) on Mac High Sierra.

I have a 5 page PDF document I am attempting to remediate. After several passes trying to get uncooperative text into the correct order in the Content and Tag panels, I re-ran the report. The document is still returning the same "Non-tagged" content flags. Its as if I've done no work at all!!

Switching to the Reading Order Tool, I then had to re-tag every page, which showed that all my meticulous work done in the Tag panel resulted in empty tags. I had to delete the ones I'd made and re-organize the generated tags.

Doing it this way is fine, but the trouble is that using this method would not apply anything to Pages 2 and 5, half of Page 4, and only the artifact footer on Page 3. Just to be clear, IT DID WORK only on page 1 and some of 3 and 4.

Much of the info at Training resources | Adobe Acrobat accessiblity  is redundant description rather than explanatory help. (Many are recursive links back to its own page.) It would make sense to include on this page: Repair tag structure accessibility | Adobe Acrobat DC PDF but no.

Please let me know what I can try to do to fix this.

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    2 replies

    K
    Khushbu19
    Participant
    October 10, 2018

    Hi,

    Can you please follow the steps provided by Bevi and see if you still face the same issue.

    Meanwhile, please share with us the file where this issue was observed so that we can look into the issue. Follow the steps here to easily create a shareable link for the file : How to share a file using Adobe Document Cloud .

    Regards,

    Khushbu Tekariwal

      AW_SacState
      AW_SacStateAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      October 10, 2018

      Thank you Bevi, but I've tried most of those things (under the guide of 'After several passes…'). The core issue is the inability to add tags. Ordering seems to work, but is mostly irrelevant at this point since I cant apply new tags to roughly half the document.

      To clarify for Khushbu:

      • I started with autotag, which just makes a horrible mess of empty tags, inappropriate tags, etc. It was much easier to delete and start over.
      • This PDF was created in Word. I don't get anything resembling the PDF layout when I open the source document (header is displaced, text is one column) so re-exporting is out of the question.

      I am planning to start over with a new copy of the PDF and follow Bevi's steps from his 'FYI' paragraph. (Starting over was my last resort).

      Attaching PDF as is after 6+ hours of attempts. Refer to the page numbers above to identify where the problems lie.

      Shared Files - Acrobat.com

      Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
      Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
      Legend
      October 10, 2018

      Did you try using the new and improved <grin> Autotag Document utility in the Acceessibility panel?

      Our shop has had mixed results with it.

      • If the original source document was well-structured before the PDF was made, Autotag does a decent job.
      • If the source doc wasn't made so well, the result will be 'meh'. But it's usually not difficult to correct the errors, which usually are out-of-order headings.
      • If the source is from Adobe InDesign, the layout might be overly complex and Autotag will stumble in places.

      Generally, the results can rescue a job without needing to go into the Contents panel. It does a very good job tagging:

      • Lists
      • TOCs
      • Footnotes
      • Figures
      • Body text paragraphs
      • Headings, although someone on the Acrobat programming team must have a fetish for <H4> because every document begins with it. Or maybe no one got the memo that <H1> is used for the top-level headings.

      FYI, one of the easiest ways to correct the reading order is to do it in the Order panel first. Anything you do there, including changing the RO and retagging items, will be reflected in the Tags panel and in the Content panel (somewhat). But changes don't go in the other direction, from Tags to the Order panel.

      One more suggestion: you can bring up the Order panel from the Tags panel and work on both simultaneously. When in the Tags panel, go to Options / Reading Order.

      Hope this helps.

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