Troubleshooting Common PDF Accessibility Issues

PDF documents flagged as not machine readable by Siteimprove do not contain any machine readable text. So most commonly these are scanned documents, so they’re appearing as images. You can fix these so that they’re machine readable PDFs by following these simple steps.

1. First open your document from Siteimprove using this open a new window button.
2. Download your document and open it in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
3. Using the Accessibility tool, and if you don’t have the Accessibility tool added to your tool list you can find it by selecting more tools.
4. Select Accessibility, Accessibility Check, and then Start Checking.
5. For a non-machine readable text, one of the first errors you’ll have under the document issues is Image-only PDF – Failed. Right click the Image-only PDF – Failed error and select Fix.
6. From the Recognize Text General Settings, select your Document Language, your Output, and your Download Sample To. If your document has text, select Editable Text and Images and then select OK. Adobe will then generate a report and return a machine readable text. This may take a long time if it’s a very lengthy document.
7. Once your document report is done you now have text on your PDF document and the image only PDF is now listed as passed. If your document has other errors you can find tips on how to resolve these errors on Boise State Webguide.

PDF documents flagged by Siteimprove as not having PDF tags, do not have any of the tags required for screen reader technology and other types of assistive technology to read the document effectively. You can fix these documents by following these simple steps.

1. From Siteimprove, find your document that is missing PDF tags and open it.
2. Then download it into Adobe Acrobat Pro.
3. From here, you can run an accessibility check by selecting Accessibility, Accessibility Check, Start Checking.
4. In the Document section of your accessibility checker, you’ll notice the document is not tagged. To fix this, open your Reading Order tool and start selecting your content and assigning the appropriate tags.
5. If you have any images, select them and tag them as a figure. Select your heading 1 and tag it as heading 1. Select any sub-headings and tag them as your heading 2, heading 3, heading 4, as appropriate. Select your paragraph text and tag it as paragraph text and continue this process until you have added all of your tags to your document.
6. After you’ve added all of your tags, you’ll see they appear in the tags section of your accessibility menu. You can then recheck your document and mark tagged PDF as fixed.

If your document has any other errors please see the other troubleshooting videos for assistance. If you have any questions you can find more resources on this and other topics related to web accessibility at Boise State Webguide or contact us at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.

Documents tagged in Siteimprove as being machine readable and having PDF tags can also have other issues that make them inaccessible. One of these issues is the document is missing a language definition. You can fix this issue by following these simple steps.

1. First, locate your document, open it, and download into Adobe Acrobat Pro.
2. From Adobe, you can select Accessibility, Accessibility Check, Start Checking.
3. In the documents section of your accessibility checker, you’ll notice the error Primary Language – Failed. Right-click this error and select Fix.
4. Select your language from the drop down option and then select OK.
5. Now you’ll notice that Primary Language is Passed.

If your document has other errors you may need to resolve them before saving and uploading to your website. See the additional troubleshooting videos for more assistance. You can find more resources on this and other topics related to web accessibility at Boise State Webguide, or you can contact us at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.

Documents tagged in Siteimprove as being machine readable and having PDF tags can also have other issues that make them inaccessible. One of these issues is the document has no title. You can fix this issue by following these simple steps.

1. First, locate your document, open it, and download into Adobe Acrobat Pro.
2. From Adobe, you can select Accessibility, Accessibility Check, Start Checking.
3. In the documents section of your accessibility checker, you’ll notice the error Title – Failed. Right-click this error and select Fix.
4. In the Description dialog box, uncheck Leave As Is and type in your title and select OK.
5. Now you’ll notice that Title is Passed.

If your document has other errors you may need to resolve them before saving and uploading to your website. See the additional troubleshooting videos for more assistance. You can find more resources on this and other topics related to web accessibility at Boise State Webguide, or you can contact us at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.

Documents tagged in Siteimprove as being machine readable and having PDF tags can also have other issues that make them inaccessible. One of these issues is the document contains no headings. You can fix this issue by following these simple steps.

1. First, locate your document, open it, and download into Adobe Acrobat Pro.
2. From Adobe, you can select Accessibility, Accessibility Check, Start Checking.
3. You’ll notice that under headings in the accessibility checker you have Appropriate Nesting – Passed but if you look in the Tags section you’ll notice there aren’t any heading tags present in the document.
4. To fix this you can open your Reading Order tool, and select your content and tag it as an appropriate heading. Your document should have one heading 1 and then each sub-heading should be listed appropriately starting at heading 2, heading 3, heading 4, and so on.
5. Continue tagging your document until you have added all the appropriate heading tags.
6. After you’ve added all your appropriate heading tags you’ll notice that they are now listed in your Tags section. If you’ve skipped a tag by accident, for example going from a heading 2 to a heading 4, this appropriate nesting error may get flagged as failed. If you haven’t skipped any levels, this appropriate nesting item should remain as passed.

If your document has other errors you may need to resolve them before saving and uploading to your website. See the additional troubleshooting videos for more assistance. You can find more resources on this and other topics related to web accessibility at Boise State Webguide, or you can contact us at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.