How to make PDFs accessible

The programmatic reading order of your PDF is the order that screen readers and other software will read out its content.

Your PDF must have the correct programmatic reading order so the information in it is accessible to people who use software to understand digital content.

How to check programmatic reading order

You should only check the programmatic reading order after making all other edits to your PDF. If you edit your PDF after checking the programmatic reading order, you'll need to do it again. This is because editing your PDF can cause changes to the programmatic reading order.

You need to check the content panel first and then the accessibility tags panel.

Content panel

To check the programmatic reading order of your PDF using the content panel:

1. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro
2. Go to the 'View' menu, then 'Show/Hide', then 'Navigation Panes'. Select 'Content'.
3. Select the 'Options' menu within the content panel and make sure 'Highlight content' is selected. This means that when you select an item in the content panel, the content in the PDF it applies to will be outlined
4. Select each item in the content panel one by one to check whether the content is in the correct order. You may need to expand some items to see them all.

Accessibility tags panel

To check the programmatic reading order of your PDF using the Accessibility tags panel:

1. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro
2. Go to the 'View' menu, then 'Show/Hide', then 'Navigation Panes'. Select 'Accessibility tags'.
3. Select the 'Options' menu within the accessibility tags panel and make sure 'Highlight content' is selected. This means that when you select an item in the accessibility tags panel, the content in the PDF it applies to will be outlined
4. Select each item in the accessibility tags panel one by one to check whether the items are in the correct order. You may need to expand some items to see them all.

How to correct programmatic reading order

If you find that the programmatic reading order of your PDF isn't right, you must correct it.

If you find any issues when checking the content or tags panels, fix them by dragging and dropping the panel items into the correct order.

You should check and fix the content panel before checking and fixing the tags panel.

Watch a video showing why it's important to make sure that both the content panel and the tags panel are in the correct order.

Norfolk County Council staff can contact the Digital Customer Experience Team (opens new window) (opens in new window) for help checking or fixing PDF programmatic reading order in Acrobat Pro.