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Re: Help! Inadvertently checked "Tag Annotations" in right-click menu

for

From: Karen McCall
Date: Jan 25, 2023 8:48AM

Yes! Adobe does present us with new adventures with each version.

I discovered the strange behaviour two years ago when remediating a PDF. I thought previously that the "Create Links from URLs" setting was for when you were tagging a PDF. I hadn't noticed the problem of the "phantom links" until two years ago when I got an annotation error in a PDF document and the links I remediated were created correctly. It took me two days to track down the problem. Once I unchecked that check box while remediating a PDF, I had no problems. I now add it to my training.

Yes, to create accessible links you need to have the Tag Annotations checked.

I agree about Foxit. I don't recommend it. I had to do training on it a few months ago and found many of the tools I rely on in Acrobat were missing or not fully functional. I also found that the latest version of JAWS does not work in the Foxit PDF viewer, so I had to launch Acrobat to test the files anyway.

However, Kofax PowerPDF is worse than Foxit. It tags everything as either a P, Figure or Table tag. There are no heading tags and no list tags even if you start with an accessible Word document. The quality of tagging has significantly deteriorated since Kofax purchase PowerPDF from Nuance in 2019.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Laura Roberts
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2023 10:38 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Help! Inadvertently checked "Tag Annotations" in right-click menu

Did more troubleshooting and both of you are right.

Acrobat is acting a little strange here.
So what happens is if you create a PDF from a Word doc with cold links in it, when you first open the PDF and hover the mouse over the cold links, the cursor remains a cursor and it appears that the links are cold.
But don't be fooled - there's a DELAY - if you wait about a few seconds, then go back and hover over the supposedly cold link again, the link has changed to hot and clickable.

So Karen, I'm going to try what you said and see if that works when I'm revising this PDF.

Been remediating for years and Adobe always finds a new way to drive me crazy lol.
(To make things even more interesting, to save money my main client switched to Foxit and IMO, Foxit is not ready for prime time when it comes to remediation. I had to report bugs to Foxit on Day One.)


On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 10:08 AM Laura Roberts < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> This is in Adobe Acrobat not Reader. You can only get to the menu in
> question by right-clicking on a tag in the tags panel.
>
> I found that if "tag annotations" is unchecked while remediating, the
> links remain cold. In other PDFs I remediated where I didn't
> accidentally click that, the problem doesn't occur.
>
> I have the feeling I'm going to have to redo a big chunk of this
> PDF...ugh
>
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2023, 2:22 AM Steve Green
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
>> What you are describing is a native Adobe Reader feature that you
>> cannot control. It automatically makes text clickable if it has
>> either of the following structures:
>>
>> [anything]://[anything]
>> www.[anything]
>>
>> In the latter case, it adds the protocol http:// to the link, not
>> https://.
>>
>> It does not alter the annotations or tags, so the links are not in
>> the focus order and they are not accessible to assistive
>> technologies. It's just a feature that Adobe thought would be useful to some people.
>>
>> The behaviour is different in other PDF reader applications. For
>> instance, Firefox and VIP PDF Reader do not create any links. Chrome
>> does create links, but it uses slightly different rules:
>>
>> [http or https]://[anything]
>> www.[anything]
>>
>> The only way to prevent Adobe Reader and Chrome from creating links
>> automatically is to use URLs that don't match those structures. I
>> can't think of any nice way to do that, so you would probably need to
>> resort to a nasty hack like adding a very narrow space after the
>> colon. I don't think that would cause any problems for assistive
>> technologies when reading the link, but you would need to test it.
>>
>> That said, I don't like doing hacks like that, so when I had the same
>> problem I just told the client the reason and said there is nothing
>> we can do.
>>
>> Steve Green
>> Managing Director
>> Test Partners Ltd
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf
>> Of Laura Roberts
>> Sent: 24 January 2023 23:18
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Subject: [WebAIM] Help! Inadvertently checked "Tag Annotations" in
>> right-click menu
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> In a PDF I was remediating, I inadvertently checked the "tag annotations"
>> in a tag right click menu. This causes Acrobat to assign annotations
>> to URL's as they are created.
>>
>> The PDF in question has some URL's that they do NOT want linked,
>> since the links become outdated fairly often.
>>
>> How to fix this?
>>
>> I tried:
>> Edit PDF>Link>Add link - BUT there is no link to delete I tried
>> right clicking on the URL text tag itself to see if any menu options
>> appeared to remove the link, but there are none I checked the tags
>> attributes, etc but I don't see anything there And as you all are
>> probably aware - it's impossible to delete an annotation in the content panel.
>>
>> Even though the link appears not to be present in the tag and edit
>> menus
>> - it the cursor still turns into a hand over it in the PDF and it is
>> clickable.
>>
>> Attached screenshot of right click menu and of a cold link that pops
>> up the URL when it shouldn't - wasn't able to capture the cursor
>> turning into hand, you'll have to take my word for it.
>>
>> I cannot figure this out for the life of me!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Laura
>> >> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flist.
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>> %7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLC
>> JXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=pno27pxQx7gyE634NTxt5LTD6Rmv%2BOex
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>

--
Best regards,
Laura Roberts
413-588-8422