When you export a Word document as a PDF, the header and footer are automatically tagged as artifacts. In many cases, however, this is not the correct implementation. The footer often contains important contact information that does not appear anywhere else in the document.
And as you can imagine, the contact details are relevant content of the document and must therefore also be available to people with disabilities. So if the header or footer contains important information, then these areas must not be completely tagged as artifacts. But how should such headers and footers be handled so that the content is available to people with disabilities, but at the same time this content does not disrupt the flow of reading?
approach
There is a simple solution for this. The content of the header and footer is usually the same on every page. The variable content such as page numbers in the footer and chapter headings in the header are not interesting for screen reader users, as they do not navigate the content via pages, but rather via the headings in the document, for example. So if the footer contains the important contact details on every page, for example, you can tag the footer once on the first page and move the tags to the beginning of the document.
solution in Adobe Acrobat
1. In the search bar, search for the “Reading Order” tool and open it
2. Select text so that it is highlighted in color (while the Reading Order window is open) >
click "Text/Paragraph"
3. In the search bar, search for the “Accessibility Tags” tool and open it
4. Highlight part of the recently tagged content >
Open tag tree options >
“Search for a tag in a selection”
5. Parent paragraph tag
of the footer content to the beginning of the document
Special case: Link included in footer
If hyperlinks are included in the footer, you still need to correctly tag the hyperlink on the first page as a link (in addition to previously tagging the text itself). The hyperlinks in the footers of the remaining pages can be deleted for the tagging structure (this will keep the text and appearance, but the links will no longer work on the remaining pages).
6. Open the tag tree options (while on the first page) >
"Seek"
7. Select “Unmarked Annotations” >
click “Search”
8. Make sure the link you found is on the first page >
“Tag Element” click
Note: If a tag was already marked in the tag structure tree before clicking on "Tag element", a link will be automatically created within this tag. In this case, the "New tag" window from the next step will not open after clicking on "Tag element"! Instead, you must create a new link tag yourself within the tag structure tree.
9. Select “Link” >
"OK"
10. Move link tag to the relevant P-tag
11. On all remaining pages of the document: right-click link >
“Delete link”
Note: If you delete the link, the link text and formatting will remain, but the link will no longer be functional. Alternatively, you can keep the link and ignore the error message in the PAC Checker. This means that the document is theoretically not PDF/UA1 compliant, but from a practical point of view it is still accessible.
If you accidentally delete an important link that should actually be tagged, you can mark the link and create a new link by right-clicking on the link text.
