Suggestion for Tags in Adobe Acrobat

[AQD Webmaster]

I would like to see one of two (or both) features in Adobe Acrobat DC Pro.  "Edit / Replace Tags" and/or "Change All Header Tags to Paragraph".  Why?

I noticed that when PDFs are created from MS Access Reports that involve anything that looks like a large table, Adobe mistakingly tags many parts of the table text as header ( <H3>, <H4>, etc.) instead of text in a paragraph ( <P> ).  For a large PDF, it can be painstaking to fix these, so often times (for expediency sake), I just leave them.  It would be so much easer and quicker if I can just wipe them all out in one swoop and then change the <P> tags to <Hx> tags where appropriate by hand.  Those usually number much fewer and are quick to spot.

If anyone can suggest VBA code that would find all header tags and change them to paragraph, I would welcome that.

Thanks.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

First, I think you're confusing headers with headings.

Headers are things that repeat at the top of a page (like page numbers), and per the PDF/UA accessibility standard, they are artifacted. Otherwise they get entwined with the content and make a mess for those using assistive technologies.

Headings, on the other hand, are critical for accessibility because they convey the sementic stucture to those who use screen readers, as well as provide a method to navigate the PDF. So they're critical to make a PDF accessible.

Acrobat Pro already has a tool that can globally change one tag to another: Role Map. It's found in the Tag panel's Options Menu — Edit Role Map.

You can add a New Item that sets /H3  /P, for example and that will change how H3 appears in the tag tree and is interpreted by assistive technologies.

Caution: be sure you know how to spell Acrobat tags: they are case sensitive. If you need a reference, we have one on our website at https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_05-02_tags/pdf-ua-tags.shtml

Question: I'm just curious why you want to remove all heading tags <Hx> to plain body text <P> tags. That's a very uncommon thing to do in a PDF and generally degrades accessibility. So I'm just wondering what the situation is that your want to do this. That's all!

[AQD Webmaster]

Thanks for pointing out the distinction between Headers and Headings.  It's subtle but important!  I did mean Headings.  I'll check out the role maps.  I do know about the case-sensitive tags, too.

Question: I'm just curious why you want to remove all heading tags <Hx> to plain body text <P> tags. That's a very uncommon thing to do in a PDF and generally degrades accessibility. So I'm just wondering what the situation is that your want to do this. That's all!

By @Bevi Chagnon - PubCom

It's just for MS Access Reports turned into PDFs.  The isue I brought up does not come up with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  For some reason, the text inside exported Access reports that have large data tables are often mis-tagged as <Hx> instead of <P> in much of the PDF.  In, for example, a 200-page PDF, trying to correct that is a pain.  If I can turn all headings to <P> in one quick shot, then I can seek out the real headings (much fewer in number), and I can change them into <H1> and <H2>, etc. manually.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

Thanks for the explanation about Access' error, @AQD Webmaster.

Whatever conversion utility that's being used to export Access to PDF is incorrectly putting <Hx> tags in <Tables> rather than <P>.

Try exporting to PDF using another method. There are 2 available to pretty much everyone:

• Adobe PDF Maker from the Acrobat Ribbon or File / Save As Adobe PDF. Both invoke PDF Maker.
• Microsoft's built-in PDF export utility: File / Save As / and select PDF as the file type. Drill down a bit deeper to get to the options to select Tag accessibility.
• FoxIt has PDF Editor Pro that creates PDFs from MS Office apps. It might generate a better PDF from Access, but frankly I don't use it because it reading tools aren't as good with accessibility (but that's a different function from what you need).

If you are using Adobe PDF Maker, please log that as a bug at https://acrobat.uservoice.com/

When you do, please come back here and let us know about your posting so we can upvote it. Without votes on UserVoice, there's little hope it'll be noticed and corrected by Adobe.