| 35 Acrobat 9 Pro PDF Accessibility Repair Workflow

Remove or replace document structure tags

If the tags in a PDF file in Acrobat appear to be overly complicated you can try retagging an already tagged

document. To do this, you must first remove all existing tags from the tree.

If adding tags to a PDF in Adobe Acrobat results in a tagging structure that is overly complicated or too

problematic to fix, you can use the TouchUp Reading Order tool to remove or replace the current structure.

If the document contains mostly text, you can select a page and then remove headings, tables, and other

elements to create a cleaner, simpler tagging structure.

Acrobat can retag an already tagged document after you first remove all existing tags from the tree.

Replace the existing tag structure

This procedure works best in pages that contain a single column of text. If the page contains multiple

columns, each column must be selected and tagged individually.

• Select the TouchUp Reading Order tool.

• In the document pane, drag to select the entire page. The selection includes both text and nontext

elements.

• Ctrl-drag/Command-drag around nontext page elements—such as figures and captions—to

deselect them, until only text is selected on the page. Click Text in the TouchUp Reading Order

dialog box.

In the document pane, select a nontext page element, such as a figure and caption, and click the appropriate

button in the dialog box to tag it. Repeat until all page content is tagged.

Remove all tags from a PDF

• Open the Tags tab (View > Navigation Panels > Tags) and select the root (topmost) tag, Tags.

• In the Tags tab, choose Options > Delete tag.

Note: The Clear Page Structure command in the TouchUp Reading Order dialog box removes all

tags from the currently visible pages.

Complex Structures

While you can use the TouchUp Reading Order tool to create tags in untagged PDFs or to add new tags to an

existing structure, this manual tagging doesn’t provide the same level of detail to the tagging structure as the

Add Tags To Document command, such as paragraphs, bulleted and numbered lists, line breaks, and

hyphens. Before you clear the existing structure, make sure that manual tagging is your only recourse.

To perform more advanced reading order and tagging tasks—such as fixing complex tables, removing

obsolete tags after you delete pages, and adding alternative text to links—you may need to use the Content

Panel and the Tags panel, which provide an alternate set of tools and features for manipulating PDF tags.

Content Panel

Use the Content Panel to correct reflow problems in a PDF that can’t be corrected by using the TouchUp

Reading Order tool. Because you can damage a PDF by editing content objects, make sure that you’re

familiar with PDF structure before you change anything. For comprehensive information about PDF

structure, see the PDF Reference Sixth Edition: Adobe Portable Document Format Version 1.7, on the PDF

reference page (English only) of the Adobe website.

The Content Panel provides a hierarchical view of the objects that make up a PDF, including the PDF object

itself. Each document includes one or more pages, a set of annotations (such as comments and links), and

the content objects for the page, consisting of containers, text, paths, and images. Objects are listed in the

Making PDF Accessible with Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro