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Erica271828
Participant
August 16, 2021
Answered

Whiteout squares appear in Acrobat but not other PDF applications

  • August 16, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 3567 views

I've been redacting some PDFs to post online, which leaves black rectangles where the redacted portions were.  The black rectangles are visually distracting, so I've been using the "Comment > Add shape > Rectangle" tool to put white rectangles with white borders over the black rectangles.  After saving and closing the document, I see that the white rectangles appear as desired when I open the PDF in Acrobat, but when I open it from another application the white rectangles appear as transparent black-bordered rectangles, through which the black redaction rectangles are visible.  These documents are for public viewing and I wiould like for the rectangles to be whited out regardless of what PDF program the viewers uses.  Any help is apprec 

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Correct answer Document Geek

Other PDF reader do not always honor  PDF comments made in Acrobat. Instead of adding white rectangles on top or the redaction, change the color of your redaction from black to white.

 

It's not readily apparent how to do it. But you'll need to bring up the Properties toolbar (Cmd / Ctrl + E). Change the color, then make your redactions. Then apply them.

 

1 reply

Document Geek
Community Expert
Document GeekCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 16, 2021

Other PDF reader do not always honor  PDF comments made in Acrobat. Instead of adding white rectangles on top or the redaction, change the color of your redaction from black to white.

 

It's not readily apparent how to do it. But you'll need to bring up the Properties toolbar (Cmd / Ctrl + E). Change the color, then make your redactions. Then apply them.

 

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Erica271828Author
Participant
August 16, 2021

That was just the ticket.  Thanks so much for this helpful information! 🙂

gary_sc
Community Expert
gary_scCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 16, 2021

If your class is held in a US or Canadian school (K – post-graduate), then it's required to be fully accessible per federal laws.

(In the US, that's Sec. 508 for accessible digital material, as well as our "equal access to education" laws such as Title IX, Sec. 504, Title II, ESSA, IDEA, etc.)

 

Redacting is not accessible, and we don't recommend that method regardless of the color because it does not fully convey the status of the information that's being hidden: that is, x number of characters are redacted. And in what you describe, your students will ask, why is this text being redacted?

 

We have 2 solutions, both of which will keep you and your school out of legal hot water:

  1. Use Acrobat's Edit PDF tools and literally delete the content you don't want in there ("test this Friday"). Save the file as a new PDF. And then remediate the new version to comply with the PDF/UA-1 accessibility standard. This will meet your Sec. 508 accessibility requirements.
  2. Open the PDF in Acrobat, and File / Export To / Word.DOCX.  You can now open the exported content in MS Word and edit it as you need. Make this new Word version accessible and you can distribute the Word version directly to your students. Or you can export it to PDF (with the export settings for accessible tagged PDF) and give students the accessible PDF version.

 

Check with your school about making educational materials accessible. They usually have online guides for faculty to use.

 


Wow, thanks Bevi. 

 

You mentioned Federal laws, my wife was an attorney mostly doing insurance issues which are all state controlled. Do states have to follow the federal low here? Or is this only pertinant to Federal Courts? And I gather there are Federal laws governing States for schools?

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