Body
- In the settings tab, make sure “exact” and “tagged” are checked and “untagged is not checked.
- You can change your highlight color.
- User preferences > check “consider elements containing only spaces to be empty” and “copy contents of selected tags to find text”.
- You can resize panels by dragging them with your mouse.
- The reset panel’s location button in settings can fix any panel sizing.
- CommonLook PDF can’t change the Physical View of a document.
- You need to resize any text boxes before putting it into CommonLook.
- You need to add / edit links (including in table of contents) before going to CommonLook.
- Adjust color contrast before going to CommonLook.
- You must have fonts embedded beforehand if you’re using PDF / UA standards.
- The PDF must already have tags.
- Go to tags route (tags tag) > right click > flatten tags.
- This gets rid of unnecessary grouping tags and pushes important tags to the root level.
- Tags route > right click > remove role maps.
- This converts custom tags to default PDF tags that they are mapped to.
- Tags route > right click > create document tags.
- Structural – tests for empty tags, alt text, and broken links, as well as tables, lists, and table of content tags are correct.
- Accessibility – choose what standard(s) to test against.
- You can choose a structural and an accessibility standard at the same time.
- Click and drag to select a spot > go to the insert tag tab > select your heading level (h1, h2, p, etc.).
- Adjust nesting in the tags tree (right click > level up).
- Delete any empty tags (right click > cleanup > skip empty cells [ctrl + E]).
- With tag section selected > convert tag tab > paragraph button.
- Select tags you want to merge (ctrl click to select multiple) > right click > merge tags.
- Un-tag any page numbers or running headers / footers.
- Insert tag > pagination (lets you artifact).
- Settings > untagged (lets you select untagged content).
- Highlight / select section > insert tag tab > select type of tag.
- Deselect untagged checkbox.
- Right click failures and have the fix wizard make adjustments.
- Right click on user verification items to manually check it.
- After changing something, run an incremental check.
- Hit the report button on the verification panel to generate a compliance report.
- You can change items to passed status by right clicking the error and hitting change status.
- Select p tag that has the figure text > go to convert tag > convert to span > insert tag tab > insert into caption.
- Is the graphic conveying anything important?.
- Figure tag > properties panel > type in alt text > hit the tab key.
- Un-tag instead of marking as decorative.
- Mark redacted blocks as such (give them figure tags and say “redacted text” in the alt text).
- After tagging is done, right click the tags root and hit “create document tag”.
- Run verifications and fix errors.
- Tag watermarks only once, unless decorative.
- The “actual text” field in the properties panel should be used when a figure replaces a character.
- The “expansion text” field is used to replace acronyms or abbreviations with the full terms.
- Select formula > “insert tag” tab > “standard tags” dropdown menu > “formula”.
- Provide the formula in the alt text field.
- Type out the meaning of any symbols (“the square root” instead of √ ).
- Settings tab > make sure only the “exact” and “tagged” checkboxes are checked.
- Hit the “user preferences” button > check the “consider elements containing only spaces to be empty” checkbox.
- When a table is used for formatting instead of data structure it is called a “presentation table”.
- Right click table tag > linearize table > decide on horizontal or vertical.
- Horizontal means it tags it in order of left to right on the table, vertical means that it tags it in order of top to bottom.
- Try one and if it doesn’t work, try the other.
- Data tables do not need to be linearized.
- Each row in a table has a TR tag, and it contains header cells (TH) or data cells (TD).
- Column headers with are TH tags with a “column” scope, and row headers with are TH tags with a “row” scope.
- Table data does not have scope.
- Tables are tagged row by row from top to bottom.
- For a table with both column and row headers, the first TR is only THs with a column scope. Then, each TR after it has one TH and the rest of the row is TD cells.
- To fix these tags, right click the main table tag and hit “show table editor”.
- There you can fix the tag type for every cell.
- Select cells in the table editor to set their cell scopes in the properties field.
- Sometimes tables can be found as just a stream of P tags.
- To fix this, highlight the whole table > “insert tag” tab > “generate table” (the table icon with a gear on it close to the far right of the tab).
- Right click the table tag > “level up”, then right click any tag > “cleanup” > “skip empty cells”.
- You can also just hit Ctrl+ P and Ctrl+ E to do the level up and clean up commands.
- Check the table in the table editor and fix any spanning, tagging, or order issues.
- Fix span by selecting the cell and going to the properties field.
- If multiple spans are wrong, use Ctrl+ A to select all of the cells and then set all of their spans to 1.
- Use the buttons at the top of the table editor to set column and row headers.
- Merge any cells together by selecting them in order and hitting Ctrl+ M.
- Merge cells starting from right to left.
- To remove empty cells, select the cells and delete their tags. Make sure to use the cleanup function to get rid of empty tags afterwards (Ctrl+ E).
- You can also get rid of empty cells by using the “full table cleanup” function.
- You can add in empty cells by inserting cells (before, after, etc.).
- Convert captions in P tags to be in caption tags (caption button in the “convert tag” tab).
- Select the text element within the caption tag and insert a span tag (“insert tag” tab > span tag).
- You can copy and paste captions to move them.
- Captions should be placed inside the table tag, above the first TR.
- Complex tables must have linked cells when two rows or columns are under one header.
- To do this hit the “Generate one level linked headers” button in the table editor.
- If headers are set up strangely in tables you can redraw tables for easier tagging.
- Redraw the table in the table editor by inserting cells and adjusting spans as needed.
- Add empty cells as needed to line stuff up.
- Check all headers are properly lined up and linked.
- Remember to clean up empty tags.
- When tables are broken up over a page break it is required that the column headings are repeated on the new page, but this can be an issue for screen readers.
- This creates two table tags.
- To fix this, select the first table tag and go to the table editor. Ensure everything in the table is tagged and formatted correctly.
- Remove anything between the table pieces (page numbers, footnotes, etc.).
- Select the second table tag and go to the editor. Make sure everything is formatted correctly and untag the repeated column headers. To do this, use the delete key or right click and hit “untag”.
- Make sure to do a “skip empty cells cleanup”.
- Make sure any row headers or non-repeated column headers are tagged.
- Selection order matters when merging! Select the first / top table tag first.
- Hold shift or ctrl to select the second table tag.
- Right click > “merge tables” > “add rows” (the “add columns” button is used when a table is growing wider).
- Go to the merged table tag and go to the table editor. Double check that the table is tagged and formatted correctly and merged in the right order.
- Add linked level headers as needed (info found in the “Complex Tables” section.
- When charts are inserted into a document as a picture / figure, its better to convert that information into a table rather than put it in the alt text field.
- Screen readers can jump around and move freely in tables, but screen readers would have to listen to the whole alt text description over again to check a specific data point.
- First, highlight the graph and hit the “generate table from selection” button within the “insert tag” tab.
- Level up the table tag until it is at the root level and use the cleanup function.
- Open up the table editor and start fixing up the cells.
- It’s good to begin by making all of the cells 1 column by 1 row, for clarity in seeing the layout.
- Run a “table full cleanup” to get rid of empty cells (right click > cleanup > full table cleanup).
- Insert cells and move information around as needed.
- Ensure the table info is in the same order as the info on the graph.
- Make sure to tag headers as such and set their scope.
- Create linked cells as needed.
- Screen readers tell the user how long a list is, and when it starts and begins.
- Lists cannot be tagged as several paragraph tags or as one large paragraph tag.
- Lists have L tags, with LI (list item) tags contained beneath the L tag as children.
- Each LI tag should have a Lbl (label) and a LBody (list body) tag.
- The Lbl tag contains the bullet point, number, roman numeral, etc. for each list item.
- The LBody contains the text.
- Like how we usually insert tags, highlight the content in the list, tag it using the “generate list tag from selection” button (the one with the gear icon) in the “insert tag” tab, level the tag up to the root level, and clean up empty tags.
- Its important to open up the LI, Lbl, and LBody tags to ensure it is tagged correctly, and to walk through the tags to ensure the list is in the right order.
- You can use your keyboard’s arrow keys to open and close tags.
- You can right-click to also expand all tags.
- To fix an unnecessary L tag nested within an LBody tag, highlight the text of that list point, go to the “insert tag” tab and select the correct tag type (LBody), level up as needed and clean up.
- If part of the Lbl tag is contained within the the LBody tag, select the whole Lbl text in the physical view, and set the Lbl text as an Lbl tag using the “insert tag” tab. Level up the new Lbl tag and clean up.
- Ensure that ordered lists have proper list numbering values assigned to the in the properties tab.
- Do not tag numbered headings as a list.
- You can hit the “single page scrolling” button at the bottom of the interface, to scroll across the page break.
- When a list is broken over a page break, remediate the parts as separate lists and then merge them (similar to what we do for tables).
- Remember to select the first part of the list and then the second part before merging.
- Nested lists have sub lists / sub points within them.
- Create the list tag like before, and check that any sub lists are contained in the proper order in the tag structure, on its proper level.
- A nested tag should have an L tag nested beneath the last point’s Lbl tag.
- Glossaries can be tagged as lists (it is very helpful for glossaries to be tagged as such).
- For this, the terms in the glossary would be considered like the bulled points or numbers in the Lbl tag.
- Multicolumn lists are tagged the same way as multipage lists (separate and then merge).
- Link tags are one of the few tags that can’t be placed at root level (These are called inline level tags).
- Link tags must be nested inside another tag (P, TH, TD, or LBody).
- Link tags are below the main tag (p), and above the hyperlink text and an annotation tag (annotations are the interactive part of the link). The order of hyperlink text and annotation doesn’t matter (the annotation can come before the text).
- Links are tagged just like everything else, except you don’t need to level up to the root level.
- Always check that the created tag has both an annotation and its hyperlinked text.
- Either links need alternative text or annotations need contents.
- Go to the settings and hit the “untagged” checkbox.
- Highlight and insert a link tag.
- Right click the newly created “path” tag and untag it.
- Multiline links contain a hyperlink text tag and an annotation for each line that the link spans.
- Make sure that the annotation tags are next to each other, and the text tags are next to each other.
- The text tags should be kept in reading order.
- Since there is no hyperlink text, the link tag will only include an annotation.
- The link tag should be inside of a paragraph tag.
- The figure tag should be located below, but not within, the paragraph tag containing the link.
- Use the fix wizard after running a verification to add in alt text to URLs or image links.
- Add contents to each link, using the same alt text.
- Form tags are “inline level” and cannot be at root level (like link tags).
- The tag structure of a form is a paragraph tag, form tag, and then both the text and annotation tag (the order of these two doesn’t matter).
- You can only have one annotation per form tag.
- This means a form with multiple checkboxes has to have individual form tags for each checkbox.
- Highlight the first section / field of a form and use the “form” button within the insert tag field.
- Different fields in one form need separate paragraph tags (insert p tag, level up to root level).
- For a form where your first, middle, and last name are input into different textboxes, each one gets its own p tag.
- Grouped tags are tagged exactly like standalone forms (each field gets a separate tag) but they are all contained under one p tag.
- Standalone – individual forms that don’t have much to do with each other.
- Grouped – all connected (parts of an address for example).
- Mutually exclusive radio buttons can be broken in acrobat and read as the same text for both buttons.
- This is fixed by running a JavaScript in the Radio Button Properties.
- This will need to be done in Acrobat since CommonLook can’t add content.
- In acrobat open the “prepare form” tool > right click one of the buttons > go to properties.
- Use the following text:
var A = this.getField(“RadioButton1”);
var B = this.getField(“RadioButton2”);
if (A.value == “Yes”){
B.value = “Off”;
}
- Edit the script as needed and add more lines if there are more than two radio buttons.
- Change the names in the general properties to match the script (RadioButton1 & RadioButton2).
- Change the radio button choices in the Options menu in the properties. For “yes” and “no” radio buttons, change them to yes and no.
- In the actions tab of the properties panel, select trigger “mouse up” and action “run a JavaScript”. Copy and paste the script into the JavaScript editor window in Acrobat > “add”.
- In the actions tab of the properties panel, select trigger “on blur” and action “run a JavaScript”. Copy and paste the script into the JavaScript editor window in Acrobat > “add”.
- Repeat the last two steps for the next button but change the script values as needed [ if(B.value == “No”){ A.value = “Off”} ]
- Check that you can’t select both radio buttons at once.
- Put the updated file back into CommonLook and check that the radio buttons are tagged correctly and in the right order.
- Tag each textbox separately.
- Locate them all under the text describing them (check all that apply for example).
- When adding a tool tip to each checkbox add the number (1 of 5, 2 of 5, etc.).
- The table tag is labeled as a TOC tag. This has TOCI (table of contents item) tags beneath / within it for every item in the table. Each TOCI tag contains a reference tag containing the text for that item.
- Highlight the content within the table and hit the “generate TOC” (the one with the gear icon) from the insert tag tab. Level up the tag to the root level and cleanup (skip empty cells).
- Right click the TOC tag and hit “artifact leaders” to artifact the long lines of dots.
- If you don’t do this, screen readers read out each individual dot.
- Open each TOCI and check that they all have a reference tag with proper alt text.
- Double check the alt text in the properties fields to make sure that the dots are gone.
- Link tags go inside the reference tags of each TOCI.
- Links must be added in the source file or in Acrobat, not in CommonLook.
- Links must have annotations and link text.
- To nest points of a table add in another TOC tab beneath the TOCI reference tag where you want it to indent.
- Have the TOC tag at the same level as the reference tag above it.
- The “generate TOC” button should create the nest structure, but go through it and double check (count amounts of TOCIs).
- Because a TOCI can only contain one reference tag, you must merge the reference tags that are splitting the table item.
- Ctrl click the first reference tag and then the second reference tag, right click and hit “merge tags”.
- Clean up the empty TOCI tag(s).
- Check and fix the alt text (add spaces when needed, extra spaces don’t matter but a lack of spaces does).
- Things like a “list of figures” or “list of tables” where each item has a page number can and should be tagged like a table of contents.
- The small number or symbol that refers to a footnote should be tagged with a “reference” tag.
- Each footnote at the bottom of the page should be in a “note” tag. This should contain a Lbl tag and a Span tag. The Lbl tag should contain the reference text (the number or symbol that the reference refers to) and the span tag should contain the actual footnote text.
- Endnotes are tagged in exactly the same way as footnotes.
- Tag the reference by highlighting just that number or symbol and hitting the “reference” button in the insert tag tab.
- The reference tag should be on the same level as the text tag above it.
- Highlight the whole footnote, including the reference symbol, and select “note” in the insert tag tab.
- Then, highlight just the superscript / reference symbol and insert an Lbl tag.
- Highlight the actual text of the footnote and insert a “Span” tag.
- You can move the note tag to be right after the paragraph where it is referenced for better ease of use for screen readers.
- You cannot do this to end notes, only footnotes.