Operation Manual

255
USING ACROBAT X STANDARD
Accessibility, tags, and reflow
Last updated 10/11/2011
PDFMaker provides conversion settings that let you create tagged PDFs in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
For more information about creating accessible PDFs, see www.adobe.com/accessibility.
For more information, see the documentation for your authoring application.
About tags in combined PDFs
You can combine multiple files from different applications in one operation to create a single PDF. For example, you
can combine word-processing files with slide presentations, spreadsheets, and web pages. Choose File > Create >
Combine Files Into A Single PDF.
During conversion, Acrobat opens each authoring application, creates a tagged PDF, and assembles these PDFs into a
single tagged PDF.
The conversion process doesn’t always correctly interpret the document structure for the combined PDF, because the
files being assembled often use different formats. Use Acrobat Pro to create an accessible PDF from multiple
documents.
When you combine multiple PDFs into one tagged PDF, it is a good idea to retag the combined document. Combining
tagged and untagged PDFs results in a partially tagged PDF that isn’t accessible to people with disabilities. Some users,
such as those using screen readers, will be unaware of the pages that don’t have tags. If you start with a mix of tagged
and untagged PDFs, tag the untagged files before proceeding. If the PDFs are all untagged, add tags to the combined
PDF after you finish inserting, replacing, and deleting pages.
When you insert, replace, or delete pages, Acrobat accepts existing tags into the tag tree of the consolidated PDF in the
following manner:
• When you insert pages into a PDF, Acrobat adds the tags (if any) for the new pages to the end of the tag tree. This
order occurs even if you insert the new pages at the beginning or the middle of the document.
• When you replace pages in a PDF, Acrobat adds the tags (if any) from the incoming pages to the end of the tag tree.
This order occurs even if you replace pages at the beginning or the middle of the document. Acrobat retains the
tags (if any) for the replaced pages.
• When you delete pages from a PDF, Acrobat retains the tags (if any) of the deleted pages.
Pages whose tags are out of order in the logical structure tree can cause problems for screen readers. Screen readers
read tags in sequence down the tree, and possibly do not reach the tags for an inserted page until the end of the tree.
To fix this problem, use Acrobat Pro to rearrange the tag tree. Place large groups of tags in the same reading order as
the pages themselves. To avoid this step, plan on inserting pages to the end of a PDF, building the document from front
to back in sequence. For example, if you create a title page PDF separately from the content, add the content PDF to
the title page PDF, even though the content document is larger. This approach places the tags for the content after the
tags for the title page. The tags won’t need to be rearranged later in Acrobat Pro.
The tags that remain from a deleted or replaced page don’t connect to any content in the document. Essentially, they
are large pieces of empty tag tree sections. These redundant tags increase the file size of the document, slow down
screen readers, and can cause screen readers to give confusing results. For best results, make tagging the last step in the
conversion process. Use Acrobat Pro to delete the tags of deleted pages from the tag tree.
For more information, see “Create merged PDFs” on page 89.