Alternate text disappears in Acrobat DC

[a11ycarolyn]

Hi,

I am trying to remediate an inaccessible PDF. It had 36 images with no alt text, so I went in and added alt text, then saved the document (I've actually done this twice now). If I close the document, when I open it back up the alt text is gone! I haven't even checked to see if other accessibility issues I remediated are still there.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Dave__M]

That certainly is unusual.  The very first thing I would try is to first do a Save As... and give the document a different file name.  Let us know if this changes the behavior.

My best,

Dave

[a11ycarolyn]

No, "Save as..." did not change the behavior. I was using a Mac, so I switched to a PC to see if that made a difference, but it didn't. Maybe I am doing something wrong? I am using the Action Wizard > Make Accessible to add the alt text. Then if I open it up and use the Action Wizard again, the alt text is gone.

[Dave__M · Accepted solution]

OK - so alt text isn't sticking when using the action.  Maybe try to add some manually, saving, simply to see if it's the action that's not behaving well, or the file itself.

Call up your Accessibility Tools, and choose the Reading order tool.  Find a figure in your doc, and click on it's small reading order number in the upper left corner.  Now that it's selected, right click and choose Edit Alternate Text.  Add the alt text for just this one image.  Save, inspect, and close the file... then re-open.  If the alt text 'stuck' I'd then try using the Set Alternate Text tool in the Accessibility tools to assign alt text to the rest of the images.  Inspect - save - close - reopen & inspect.

I would be interested to know how this turns out.  Also, is this issue with just this file, or do others behave the same way?

My best,

Dave

[a11ycarolyn]

When I open the reading order tool, I can see the alt text I added to my figures! Some figures aren't tagged, so I will use this tool to manually add alt text. Thank you so much, Dave! I am wondering if I should use the Action Wizard > Make Accessible feature as a basic start to achieve accessibility, or not use it at all... it seems odd that the alt text doesn't show up if the Action Wizard is deployed a second time. When I get time, I will test another file and see if the same thing happens.

[Dave__M]

Good deal!  I'm glad that things are pointing in the right direction for you now.

My best,

Dave