Tag Management and Reading Order Tool Configuration

Tag accuracy is crucial to helping individuals with disabilities understand the structure of a PDF. In this lesson, we will discuss the basic ways you can add, remove, and change existing tags in the tag tree.

Caution! When working in the tag tree, you want to save your document often. You do not want to lose hours of work when working on a document. There are many ways that you can break your document's tag structure, so please save often!

Practice Document

Altering Tag Values Practice.pdf Download Altering Tag Values Practice.pdf

Converting Tag Value

Follow these steps to convert an existing tag from one value to another:

1. Open the Navigation Pane and select the tag icon.
2. Find the incorrect tag and right-click it to open its context menu.
3. Select Properties at the bottom of the context menu.
4. In the Object Properties dialog, open the Type drop-down menu and select the correct tag value.
5. Select Close to save your change.
6. Verify the change occurred in the tag panel.
   1. Your tag should have a new value in the tag tree.

 

Converting Tag Value with the Reading Order Tool

You can also convert some tag value using the Reading Order tool. Do the following with the reading order tool open:

1. Left click the tag element in the page that you want to change.
2. Select the tag value from the reading order tool to alter it.

Opening and Configuring the Reading Order Tool

1. Open the Accessibility Checker (look for the ADA icon) from the Tools sidebar on the right-hand side of Adobe Acrobat.
2. On the list of actions, select Reading Order.
3. The Reading Order Tool will open and need to be configured. 

Ensure the following options are checked in the Reading Order Tool.

1. Show page content groups.
   1. Structure type radio button is selected.
2. Show table cells.
3. Uncheck Display like elements in a single block.
4. Show tables and figures.

Once you have the reading order tool open and configured, take a moment to look at the body of your document. You should see the following information:

• Each piece of tagged content will have a shaded box around it.
• The box will have the tag type clearly assigned to the box.
• You can select the tag icon to highlight specific content.
• Once selected, the reading order tool's button field will be interactive and can be used to convert tags into a new tag value.
• Untagged content can be selected by dragging a rectangle around the content, and it can then be added to the tag tree using the tag type buttons.

Adding New Tags to the Tag Tree

There will be times when adding new tags to a document will be necessary. This primarily occurs when you are converting imported tags into their correct value. For example, lists will occasionally export as <p> tags because the list was not properly formatted in the source document. Editors then have to add tags to the tree to ensure the accuracy of the content.

Following these steps will allow you to add new tags to the tag tree:

1. Open the Navigation Pane and select the tag icon.
2. Right-click on the tag that will precede the new tag you are adding.
3. Select New Tag from the context menu.
4. In the New Tag menu, select the appropriate tag from the Type drop-down menu.
5. The new tag should appear beneath the tag you selected in step 2 of this process and will have no content inside of it.
6. Select Okay to close the dialog.

 

Removing Tags from the Tag Tree

At times, Adobe will create errant tags with no content when converting your document. Sometimes, spaces are introduced into the source document during formatting, and Adobe will create tags to account for that space. Sighted users will never see this content, but keyboard-only and screen reader users will encounter them as part of the logical reader order.

Removing Completely Empty Tags

Follow these steps to remove empty tags from the tag tree:

1. Open the Navigation Pane and select the tag icon.
2. Select the first tag in the tag tree.
3. Right-click and select Delete Empty Tags.

Removing Tags with Empty Content (Spaces)

Some tags will have an empty content box as a child element. These will not be removed by the Delete Empty Tags method, and must be manually cleared using the Reading Order Tool. Just below, you can find an example of this type of content.

 

Removing Tags with Empty Content (spaces)

1. Save your document now.
2. With the Reading Order Tool open, select the empty tag.
3. Once it is highlighted, select Background/Artifact in the Reading Order Tool.
4. The empty tag should be removed from the document's tag structure.