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spidersilk
spidersilk
Participant
August 18, 2021
Answered

Where is Touch Up Reading Order in Acrobat Pro DC?

  • August 18, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 3668 views

I'm currently working on a contract job where checking PDFs for accessibility and fixing any problems encountered is a major focus. So I've been reading up on PDF accessibility, and almost everywhere I look, I see references to a tool called "Touch Up Reading Order". Which is apparently supposed to be under the Accessibility panel — except in my version of Acrobat (Acrobat Pro DC), it's not there.

 

There's one called just Reading Order, but I'm not sure if that's the same thing, because some of the instructions I see for using Touch Up Reading Order don't seem like they'd work with that. But maybe that's just that the interface has changed?

 

Is Reading Order in Acrobat Pro DC the same as Touch Up Reading Order in earlier versions? Or is Touch Up Reading Order still there and just in a different location that I haven't managed to find yet? Or has its functionality been replaced by something else entirely?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

The answers to your questions are too long and detailed for this user-to-user tech support forum. You really should take a full class in PDF accessibility (often called PDF Remediation) to better understand accessibility.

 

The TURO tool is where it has been since it was incorporated into Acrobat 20 (?) years ago. To access it:

  1. Select the Order Panel icon (left side of the screen). Looks like a blue "Z".
  2. From its options drop-down menu at the top (the square next to the circle-i), select Show Reading Order Panel (formerly called the TURO / Touch Up Reading Order panel).
  3. When this panel is visible on your screen, it is then active and you can select objects with its crosshairs and tag them.

 

Keep in mind that when using TURO, it will change the tags in the Tags Panel, including their Tag Reading Order, so you really need to have a solid handle on what you're doing to the PDF.

 

Sounds like much has changed with accessible PDFs since you last did this. Not only is the Acrobat interface different, but it contains more tools for accessibility. The PDF/UA-1 standard has been "refined," as well as the tools to achieve it.

 

quote
No new tags are added to the document. And attempting to tag something as background/artifact does not remove it from the reading order,
By @spidersilk

 

It takes a bit more effort to artifact something with today's Acrobat. This changed (or broke, depending upon your point of view!) a couple of versions ago.

 

  1. From the Tags panel (not the Order panel), expand the element's tag so that you can see its internal yellow banker's box (the Content Container). You must first artifact the content, then the tag that wraps around the content.
  2. Right-click on the Content Container and select Artifact.
  3. In the next pop-up, select PAGE and ignore the "attach to sides:"
  4. When done, you'll see an empty tag in the tag tree — that is, it doesn't have an expansion arrow to its left nor a yellow Content Container nested inside. Just delete the now-empty tag.

 

And get a class in PDF Remediation! Mine are good <grin>. But some of the video courses are good, too.

 

2 replies

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.comCorrect answer
Legend
August 18, 2021

The answers to your questions are too long and detailed for this user-to-user tech support forum. You really should take a full class in PDF accessibility (often called PDF Remediation) to better understand accessibility.

 

The TURO tool is where it has been since it was incorporated into Acrobat 20 (?) years ago. To access it:

  1. Select the Order Panel icon (left side of the screen). Looks like a blue "Z".
  2. From its options drop-down menu at the top (the square next to the circle-i), select Show Reading Order Panel (formerly called the TURO / Touch Up Reading Order panel).
  3. When this panel is visible on your screen, it is then active and you can select objects with its crosshairs and tag them.

 

Keep in mind that when using TURO, it will change the tags in the Tags Panel, including their Tag Reading Order, so you really need to have a solid handle on what you're doing to the PDF.

 

Sounds like much has changed with accessible PDFs since you last did this. Not only is the Acrobat interface different, but it contains more tools for accessibility. The PDF/UA-1 standard has been "refined," as well as the tools to achieve it.

 

quote
No new tags are added to the document. And attempting to tag something as background/artifact does not remove it from the reading order,
By @spidersilk

 

It takes a bit more effort to artifact something with today's Acrobat. This changed (or broke, depending upon your point of view!) a couple of versions ago.

 

  1. From the Tags panel (not the Order panel), expand the element's tag so that you can see its internal yellow banker's box (the Content Container). You must first artifact the content, then the tag that wraps around the content.
  2. Right-click on the Content Container and select Artifact.
  3. In the next pop-up, select PAGE and ignore the "attach to sides:"
  4. When done, you'll see an empty tag in the tag tree — that is, it doesn't have an expansion arrow to its left nor a yellow Content Container nested inside. Just delete the now-empty tag.

 

And get a class in PDF Remediation! Mine are good <grin>. But some of the video courses are good, too.

 

|&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 |
    spidersilk
    spidersilkAuthor
    Participant
    August 19, 2021

    Thank you so much, Bevi! This is incredibly helpful!

     

    And I will definitely look into your classes — although looking at your web site it looks the one I need most is still TBA. But I'll check back later and hopefully be able to take it at some point in the future. 

    spidersilk
    spidersilkAuthor
    Participant
    August 18, 2021

    OK, replying to my own post here. I finally found a screenshot of the Touch Up Reading Order tool and it looks like it IS the same as Reading Order in the new version...

    But I still can't get it to work. Regardless of whether I draw a rectangle around an object on the page, or select it by number in the order panel, clicking any of the tag buttons in the Reading Order tool does absolutely nothing. No new tags are added to the document. And attempting to tag something as background/artifact does not remove it from the reading order, or prevent PAC3 from flagging it as untagged text... 

     

    Am I missing something? How do I get this tool to actually work?

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