Fixing PDFs for Accessibility

Once you’ve checked your PDF for accessibility, you can begin to fix it.

The report has a lot of valuable information including where the problems are and hints on how to fix the issues. You can click on the links in the report to view the exact location of the accessibility issues and fix the issues that way. Or you can start at the beginning within the tag structure and fix the tags first. This is my preferred method because it is more thorough and you don’t miss items that need to be tagged.

If your document is tagged you’ll see a structure tree with tags that look similar to html tags. If your PDF is more than 1 page long, you need to break up each physical PDF page into “parts” and label the parts to correspond to the PDF page number as seen in the window on the top of the PDF window. (A rectangle with a number in it). This way, if you use the Accessibility Report, when you click on a link you’ll know where the tag corresponding is in the tag tree. It also helps me when I’m checking your work.

Right click on the first tag after the tag that says “Tags” and choose “Part” from the drop down menu. In the space under the drop down menu type the page number. Click OK.

Choose Part and type in the page number

Even though the PDF may be tagged, it may be tagged incorrectly. A properly tagged PDF is one that has:

• Heading tags (if the PDF has headings)
• Paragraph tags for paragraphs
• List tags for lists
• Figure tags for images
• Properly formatted Table tags if the file has tables
• Correctly labeled form tags if the file has form elements

[Hint] When working in the tags panel you can right click on any tag and choose “Highlight Content”. This will help you know where the content is for this tag. You’ll need to do this every time you open a file.