Latest Acrobat Pro update has broken the accessibility tools

[Mimi-MTC]

Oh my gosh, the recent update to Acrobat Pro has destroyed the accessibility tools. Tagging is all messed up, and alt text and links don't always carry over from Word and PowerPoint. By law (Section 508) documents intended for the public are required to provide acessible documents. Not having functioning accessibility tools in Acrobat makes this impossible.

I don't see any way to revert to an earlier version of Acrobat via Creative Cloud. Anybody know of another way to do so?

[Mimi-MTC]

Clarification: I want to revert to previous version as a stop-gap until Adobe releases a fix.

[mariahweyne]

If you are referring to the new Experience. You can disable it.

[Mimi-MTC]

The New Experience rollout hasn't yet reached me. But thanks for the suggestion.

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Oh my gosh, the recent update to Acrobat Pro has destroyed the accessibility tools. Tagging is all messed up, and alt text and links don't always carry over from Word and PowerPoint.

By @Mimi-MTC

Messed up how? I have the very latest and this has fixed the Alt text Word bug in Altvtext fields.

The rest of the tools, like tagging with Reading order, work fine, as they used to...

So please can you give some information on what it is you see (or think) is 'messed up'?

And are you sure you are on the very, very latest version?

[Mimi-MTC]

I think so? My account auto-updates, and Creative Cloud is showing it as the latest version.

Files from Acrobat and Word, whether exporting as PDF or saving as PDF, are not seeing or tagging content, and autotagging isn't doing much better. My colleagues are work are struggling with this, too, and in googling for info, I was seeing complaints about it outside our PDF Accessibility group. I gave it a try with another doc that I had previously worked on without issues, and was encountering issues this time.

Still, reading your comment Frans, I'm realizing there's one thing I didn't try: uninstalling and reinstalling Acrobat. I'm going to do that and see what happens. I'll post here when I give that a try.

Fingers crossed!

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Ah, but then it could be the way you export (not print!) to pdf I guess from Word, do you use this worlflow:

https://www.bgsu.edu/web-accessibility-and-508-compliance/creating-accessible-documents/creating-acc...

'Auto-tagging' is not the way to go.

Are you experienced in Accessible PDF and Word? And remidiating in Word? It takes time and expertise to do these things correctly 😉

[Mimi-MTC]

Yes, I do it that way. I uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat and will see how it goes tomorrow. 

Thanks Frans.

[Mimi-MTC · Accepted solution]

SOLVED!

So, despite Creative Cloud saying Acrobat was “up to date,” it actually wasn’t!

I uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat, and it was different. Exporting worked like a charm, all the tags are where they should be, no more nested in <span> tags (which I now call "<spam>" tags…), etc.

Normally I would uninstall/reinstall, but was thrown off by CC telling me it was up to date. Moving forward, when anything is acting wonky, I'll do that first.

@Frans v.d. Geest thanks for your help!

[Amal.]

Hi @Mimi-MTC 

Hope you are doing well.

We are happy to hear that you got the issue fixed. Our request would be to try out the new Acrobat interface. If you experience problems with tools, features, or functionalities, please share your questions with us. We will be happy to provide helpful resources and answers to your questions.

We will follow up with a detailed community-featured post, guiding you to familiarise yourself with the new interface and regular updates on upcoming changes.

Regards

Amal

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Hi @Mimi-MTC 

Hope you are doing well.

We are happy to hear that you got the issue fixed. Our request would be to try out the new Acrobat interface. If you experience problems with tools, features, or functionalities, please share your questions with us. We will be happy to provide helpful resources and answers to your questions.

By @Amal.

Oh for the love of... Give it up! Throw the towel in the ring man! Use your resources to fix bugs, build in PDF 2 support or anything except an interface NOBODY(!) seems to want... 😖

[Amal.]

Hi there,

Hope you are doing well and sorry to keep you waiting.

We acknowledge that the new Acrobat represents a notable change; however, we hope that as you get familiar with the new interface, you can be more productive and get more out of Acrobat.

We are actively working on the feedbacks /suggestions and will address them with the highest priority.

As you get more comfortable with the new interface, please contact us with specific questions on tools, features, or functionalities. We’re happy to provide helpful resources and answers to your questions.

If your critical workflows are impacted, you can switch to the old UI from the “Menu” on the top left corner of Windows and View Menu on MacOS.

Please go through the detailed community-featured post https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/learn-about-new-acrobat/td-p/14078856 , guiding you to familiarise yourself with the new interface.

~Amal

[jilll47525288]

Amal, the new interface is so horrible that I will never try it again.  It had me in tears all day until someone posted how to revert to the older version.  

Moving everything around to create a new experience was the most ill-conceived idea ever.  Every time I needed to do something that I once did with ease in the older version, I struggled to find the tools or buttons.  It was aggravating and caused me to burn a tremendous amount of time, thoroughly impacting my productivity. 

Some of the tools didn't function properly, if at all.  For example, when I used the circle commenting tool, I could see Acrobat drawing the bounding box as my cursor moved.  I could see the properties dialog box.  But Acrobat never actually drew the circle.  I tried it multiple times, even adjusting the properties in the hopes of getting results.  

Please go back to the old interface that people have been using for years.  There's no value in shocking customers with so dramatic a change.  Fix the tools so that they work properly.  TEST new versions fully before releasing them to make sure they work correctly.  

Over the years, Adobe has been making its software less and less user-friendly while expanding capabilities.  InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop have all become more difficult to use in many regards.  Granted, I don't use them as much as I once did, because my software needs have changed.  But every time I do use them, I have the same general feeling of struggling to do things that I once did with ease.  I wish that Adobe would maintain ease of use while expanding capabilities.  

But back to Acrobat ... Again, I emphasize that I will NEVER try the new version again.  It's that bad.  Please dump this ugly, foreign, buggy version and go back to what worked.  

[Amal.]

Hi there

We are sorry for the trouble and the experience and thank you for sharing your observation.

We are actively working on all the feedbacks and we will address them with the highest priority.

Thanks for your time and patience.

~Amal