More Adobe Acrobat fun

 Working on remediating some PDF files and have been frustrated by random elements that the accessibility checker finds in the final review.

I know that these elements are not in the visible file, but they are often artifacts from the production process.

I found a shortcut today on the Adobe help site. Sharing for my own notes and to help this pop up for more people. 

Here is the key part:

"To try this out, do this:

• launch the Preflight tool (cmd-shift-X, or go to Edit->Preflight, or search for it in the Tools view
• switch to the "PDF Standards" library (pull-down menu in the middle at the top of the Preflight window)
• again, in the Preflight window, switch to the "Fixups" list (click on the wrench icon)
• in the search field in the Preflight window, enter 'artifact'
• an item with the name "Mark all non-structure elements as artifact" will be shown
• click on the "Fix" button in the lower right to execute the fixup (again: make sure to work on a copy of your precious original PDF, or during execution of the fixup, save to a different file name and/or different folder)

Once completed, all elements should either be part of the tagging structure, or be marked as artifact (background element)

Long links and other issues in Adobe

Continuing to push my way through several PDFs that need remediation. Today's lessons:

What do you do when a long link breaks across two lines and now the hyperlink is doubled (and tripping a warning because of the duplication)?

Well, you work through each duplication, copying the links as you go. Then edit the link, delete them and edit the PDF by drawing an invisible link box over the two lines. Add back the link info and now all of the text will launch the desired web content.

What to do with the character encoding issue?

In this instance you really want to have the source document, because this means the PDF was made with the wrong fonts embedded.  I have most often found this with logos, but it can happen with bullets, checkboxes etc.  Often you can copy the graphic and place as an image (and then tag as an artifact) but sometimes you just have to recreate the PDF from scratch.