Enabling the Accessibility Tool and Tag Tree in Adobe Acrobat

What is the Tag Tree in Adobe Acrobat?

Tags in Adobe Acrobat provide necessary accessibility information and functionality for content within your document. Without tags, elements like headings, lists, tables, links, and form fields will have less meaning, and they may not be keyboard accessible for discovery using assistive technology. Documents without a tag structure tend to be unusable with assistive technology, which is why tags are required by the PDF/UA standards for document accessibility.

Where do I find the Tag Tree?

First, ensure that the Accessibility Checker in Adobe Acrobat is added to your toolbar:

  1. Select the Tools tab from the Adobe Ribbon
  2. Find the Accessibility tool under the Protect and Standardize section
  3. Select add to add it to your toolbar
  4. It will add with a universal symbol for accessibility

Now that you have the accessibility checker added to your toolbar, do the following to find your tags:

  1. Select View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes and ensure that Content, Order, and Tags are all selected.
  2. Run your accessibility checker by clicking the Accessibility link in your toolbar (shown above).
  3. Once the accessibility scan completes, the results page will appear on the left-hand side of Adobe Acrobat.
  4. The tag tree can be found in this toolbar at the bottom of the list.

Now that the accessibility checker and tag tree are visible to the editor, you can begin checking for and correcting errors in your document.