Acrobat and Accessibility

Although you can create accessible PDF files in several programs, Adobe Acrobat Professional is required to evaluate, repair, and enhance the accessibility of existing PDF files.

Tags Pane

The Tags pane allows you to view, reorder, rename, modify, delete, and create tags. Many of these actions can be completed more easily using the TouchUp Reading Order tool, but there are some actions that can only be accomplished in the Tags pane.

To view the Tags pane, select View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Tags. This pane displays the all the tags within the PDF, organized in a tree structure. This tags tree can be navigated, expanded, and collapsed using a mouse or the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Many of the tags are similar, if not identical to HTML. The most notable exception is the tag, which is similar to the tag in HTML.

How To

Highlight Content

• When the Highlight Content option is selected in the Options menu, selecting a tag should highlight the corresponding text, image, or other element in the PDF file.

Find Tag from Selection

• Just as selecting a tag highlights the content in the body of the PDF file, there is a way to accomplish the opposite effect of highlighting the tag that corresponds to selected content. First, click on the  Select Tool. Next, select text, an image, or a table. Finally, select the Options menu at the top of the Tags pane and then select Find Tag from Selection. This will highlight the tag or tags that contain the content you previously selected.

Change Tags

• At times, you will encounter a PDF file that contains incorrect tags. You can modify these by right-clicking the tag you want to change, selecting Properties, then the Tag, and then selecting the appropriate new tag type from the dropdown list labeled Type.

Add tags to an Untagged Document

• To add tags to an untagged document, choose Tools from the right-hand menu, then select Accessibility > Add Tags to Document. This process can sometimes be time-consuming, and you will almost certainly have to edit some of the tags, but it is usually faster than doing all the work manually. This is especially true if the document contains tables.