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How to use Adobe Acrobat’s Fix reading order tool

by Whitney Lewis

An important part of PDF accessibility is its tags and reading order. In this video, learn how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro’s Fix reading order tool to check and fix a PDF’s tags and reading order.

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Transcript

In this video, we’ll learn how to use the Fix reading order tool in Adobe Acrobat. 

Accessible PDFs should follow accessibility strategies like high contrast, descriptive links, logical heading structure, and alternative text. They also need proper tags and a correct reading order.

A PDF’s tags tell assistive technology what element the content is. Like paragraph text vs a list vs a heading. The reading order is the order assistive technology reads the content in.

To make sure your PDF has correct tags and reading order, we’ll use the Fix reading order tool in Adobe Acrobat. This is the main tool you’ll use for fixing tags and reading order in your PDF.

We’ll go over, how to access the tool; edit, delete, and add new tags, edit table tags, and check the reading order.

Let’s get started.

I have my PDF open. It has a heading 1 followed by a paragraph. Then there are two columns with heading 2s. The first column has some content and an image, and the second has some content and a table. 

You’ll access the tool by selecting All Tools in the top left. Next, select Prepare for accessibility. Then, select Fix reading order.

In the Reading Order dialogue box that opens, make sure Show page content groups is selected. Under Show page content groups, select Structure types.

Now, you have the Fix reading order tool open and the current tags in my PDF are showing.  

My heading 1, the paragraph content underneath it, and both heading 2s are all labeled as a p or paragraph tag, which is wrong. 

I’ll start by editing this paragraph tag. I’m going to change it to a heading 1. To do that, I’ll select the tag icon in the top left of the gray box that outlines the entire tagged area.

Then, I’ll select Heading 1 in my Reading Order dialogue box. Now, I need new tags for the paragraph content and heading 2s. When my Reading Order dialogue box is open, I can drag my cursor to select an area. Then, I’ll select the tag it should be, which is text/paragraph. Now I have my Heading 1 and the content underneath it properly tagged. For our heading 2s, I could do the same thing, but I’m going to show how to delete a tag. I’ll select the tag icon in the top left. Then, I’ll right click and select Delete selected item structure. From here, I can drag my mouse over the H2s and then the paragraph content and select the proper tags from the Reading Order dialogue box. The image is already tagged as figure, so I don’t need to fix that.

Now I have two elements left. I have a list in my first column and a table in my second.

Let’s talk about lists first. There aren’t any list tags in the Fix reading order tool. To handle lists, you have to use the Accessibility Tags panel, which we demo in our Remediating a PDF video. For this video, I’ll leave the list as is.

We can fix our table. I’ll select my table then I’ll select Table Editor in the Reading Order dialogue box. My Beach and Temperature cells are table headers, but they’re tagged as table data. So, I need to change those. I’ll right-click the td tag for beach and select Table Cell Properties. Then, I’ll change the type to header cell and the scope to column because it’s a header for a column. Then, I’ll select OK. I’ll do the same steps for the Temperature column header.

Lastly, I need to check the document’s reading order. In the Reading Order dialogue box, I’ll select Show order panel.

I’ll select each element to see the order highlight in the document. When I get to my heading 2s, Most Popular Beach and Temperature, there’s a problem. Instead of reading down the first column, the PDF goes left to right to the next column. So, a screen reader would read something like, Most Popular Beach Temperatures. The same problem is happening with the paragraph text beneath the headings. I need to rearrange this content simply by dragging and dropping the elements in the Order panel. Now, the reading order goes down the first column and then to the second column, which is correct.

You’re ready to use the Fix reading order tool to edit tags and reading order in your own PDFs. 

To learn more about Adobe’s Accessibility Checker and Tag tools, check out our video Remediate a PDF’s accessibility using Adobe’s Accessibility Checker and remember to subscribe for new video updates.

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