The basics of tagging

Thanks for joining us today to learn the basics of tagging. Today I am covering how to address common tagging issues such as fixing lists, artifacting, how to handle images, and tables.

I’ll start by opening the tags panel and select the top level tag. Notice the purple boxes around tagged content. If any content is missing a box, it’s not tagged. You can use the down arrow key to navigate the tag tree and notice how it highlights individual elements. Everything looks fine until you reach the heading list of Canadian provinces. This list was created using indentation instead of Microsoft Word’s list style. So it’s not recognized as a list. To fix this, right click the H3 tag that’s above the paragraph tags and choose new tag. Select list from the dropdown. You can type in the dialog box as well to save time. Next, you can bulk select the paragraph tags using the shift key. Once you have all the paragraph tags selected, right click and choose properties. Select list item from the type dropdown and select close. Then drag the list item tags under the new list tag. Next, open up the LI tag. The content within an LI tag needs to be tagged with the L body tag. To do this, right click on the LI tag and choose new tag.

Select the list item body tag from the dropdown. Then move the L body tag above the content container. The last thing to do is nest the content container under the L body tag. I’ll quickly do this for the remaining list item tags. Now screen readers will read the list correctly.

Next, let’s talk about artifacts. Artifacts are elements that don’t need to be read aloud, like this decorative line. To artifact this decorative line, open the figure tag, select the container, right click and select change tag to artifact. And now that the figure tag is empty, I’ll delete that as well to keep the structure. Next up are images. All images need alt text or alternative text. Alt text is descriptive text for an image that screen readers read aloud to users with visual impairments that make images accessible. To add alt text to an image, select the figure tag, right click and select properties. Add the description in the alternative text for images box. Next, let’s talk about tables a bit. This particular table has the top row that are header cells for each of the columns. As mentioned in the create an accessible file from Word tutorial, you can use the table design tab in Word to mark the first row as column headers and the first column as row headers in Word like this.

You can fix the header cells in Acrobat if they weren’t set up in Word. To do this, select the table tag, right click and open the table editor or use the keyboard shortcut Q. First, right click and select the table editor options. Check show cell types so you can see what the cells are labeled. Since none of the header cells are tagged, hold down the shift key and select the top row cells. Right click and select table cell properties. In the dialog, select header cell and set the scope to column. The scope tells the screen reader that everything in the column is related to the header cell at the top. Where the scope becomes even more important is to set the header cells for the rows. If the scope isn’t set and the screen reader is in the bottom right cell, where the number seven is located. It would read trucks, color, ruby red, midnight black, triple yellow and the number seven, but if you hold down the shift key and select the three header rows, right click and select table cell properties and set the header cell scope to row. The screen reader now reads trucks, color, triple yellow and the number seven. So as you can see, setting the scope for a header cell is very important for a row.

Here’s a quick check in on the basics of tagging. Artifacts are elements that don’t need to be read aloud. True or false? This is true. Artifacts are non-meaningful elements like a decorative image that is tagged to be ignored by assistive technologies such as screen readers. And that’s it. Now you’ve learned the basics of tagging in Acrobat Pro.