WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDFlib and Link tags

for

From: Karen McCall
Date: Oct 1, 2021 6:55AM

This is true in PDF created using Acrobat as well. If you open an untagged PDF the "phantom links" are automatically generated. If you tag the document, they will not appear in the Tags Tree and if you try to remediate them, it is almost impossible. They won't even show up when you go to Edit PDF and choose Add or Edit Links from the Link tool.

In the conversion settings for Acrobat you can uncheck the check box to Add Links and that seems to get rid of the problem of the "phantom links" but then you have to add them to the PDF.

I've unchecked this in my instance of Acrobat for when I work on untagged PDF. I then have to check it again if I'm using Acrobat to convert to tagged PDF.

Sometimes AI isn't.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Alan Zaitchik
Sent: Friday, October 1, 2021 8:24 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] PDFlib and Link tags

I've read that the PDFlib product cannot generate Link tags (although it does generate Link Annotations).
Their websites sample pdf file "link_annotations.pdf" has no tags at all, remarkably. (I checked in Acrobat and in PAC3.) Yet both JAWS and NVDA see the links, can navigate to them and activate them.
Anyone with hands on ecperience using PDFlib to create interactive elements?
Anyone who can explain why the screenreaders seem unfazed by the absence of tags in general and Link tags in particular?
Thanks,
Alan