Establish a process to convert legacy technical files by running OCR on [source=Legacy_Techfiles_2000-2015], tagging d…
Open your PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Add the Accessibility tools to your Tools pane if not already present.
Best practiceYou can add the Accessibility tools by selecting the Tools tab, then finding Accessibility and clicking Add.
Open the Tags panel by clicking on it in the left navigation pane or by selecting it from the View menu.
NoteThis panel was formerly called the Tags panel.
Expand the tag tree in the Tags panel to review the document's structure.
Identify any missing or incorrect semantic tags for headings, lists, or tables.
Best practiceUse the Reading Order tool for a visual overview of tag application and reading order.
To add a missing tag, right-click the parent tag where it belongs, select Create Tag, and choose the appropriate type (such as H1 for a heading, L for a list, or Table for a table).
To change an incorrect tag, right-click the tag, choose Properties, and select the correct tag type from the Type dropdown.
Drag tags within the tag tree to correct their order or nesting as needed.
Save your document after making all necessary tag corrections.
Run Full Check from the Accessibility tools to verify that headings, lists, and tables are correctly tagged.
Best practiceIf the Full Check reports issues, revisit the tag tree and adjust as needed.
You can right-click tags in the Accessibility tags panel to quickly add, rename, or change their type for better document structure.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
| Standard | Focus |
|---|---|
| PDF/UA | A specific standard for making PDF documents accessible, focusing on the technical structure of the PDF. |
| WCAG | A broader set of guidelines for web content accessibility, which applies to many technologies, including PDFs. |
Fixing accessibility in the original file (like a Word document) saves a lot of time and effort. When the source is accessible, the PDF created from it will often be accessible too. This avoids the difficult and time-consuming process of fixing an untagged PDF after it has already been made.
Yes, Adobe's PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API uses smart technology (Sensei) to tag both native and scanned PDFs. It can identify headings, tables, lists, and paragraphs, even in scanned documents, and also detect the language.
The reading order is the sequence in which a screen reader or other assistive technology will present the content of a PDF. It's important because if the reading order is wrong, a person using a screen reader might hear parts of the document in a confusing or illogical sequence, making it difficult to understand the information.