Fixing Common Accessibility Check Failures in PDFs

When you run the Accessibility Checker and it has detected several issues, you can try some of these common fixes to resolve them. If you do not see your error here, you can always right-click the error and select Explain. Some errors Adobe can automatically fix, by right clicking and select Fix.

Generally Useful Fix: Autotag Document and Form Fields

1. In the tools search field at the top, type in “tags” and click on Tags
2. Select all the tags and delete them
   
3. In the search field, search for “autotag”
   
4. Use both Autotag Document and Autotag Form Fields. Click Yes if this pops up.
   
5. Majority of tag related issues should be resolved.

Field description – Failed:

1. In the search field, type in “form” and click on Prepare Form
   
2. Click on one of the failed fields on your Accessibility Checker, it should highlight the field on the document
3. Right-click the highlighted field
4. Click on Properties…
   
   
5. Next to “Tooltip:”, copy and paste the name of the field, or specific an appropriate tooltip, there
   
6. Click on Close, that field should now pass

Annotations without tags error: Usually can be fixed by autotagging, but this is to help if they’re not

1. In the search field, type in “tag” and click on Tags
2. Click the options down arrow under Tags then click Find…
3. Set it to find all “Unmarked Annotations”
   
4. Search the entire document, tag for each one

Tagged content error: (Usually can be fixed by autotagging)

1. It is recommended that you use autotagging to fix this error first. Continue only if a part of the content was not autotagged.
2. Search “reading order” in the search field, then click on Reading Order
   
3. Drag select content and tag by clicking one of the buttons
   

To Fix Tab order:  (good to check this)

1. In Reading Order mode, click show Order Panel Button
   
2. Click and drag numbered items in the reading order pane (on the left side bar), until they are in order on the document (Top to bottom - left- right, like reading a book)
   
3. If any of the content in the reading order page does not need to be read (like an underline for instance) right-click and tag as artifact

Appropriate Nesting - Failed:

1. Right-click the failed element in Accessibility Checker then choose Show in Tags Panel
   
   
2. Usually it should be a <H1,H2,H3,H4> type tag, that you can double click and just change the name, for instance if H3 is before H2, change the H3 to H2 by double clicking it.