Autotag Crashing Acrobat Pro DC

[devinradcliffe]

I'm trying to tag this PDF file for accessibility for my students. It's quite large. Link.

I've tried this on a 2016 Touchbar Macbook Pro and a 2014 MacBook Air. Both devices experience the same crash so I don't think it's hardware related. I'm running Acrobat Pro DC, all up to date, and the MBA was running Acrobat XI, so I don't think software is the problem.

This file will tag if I convert it to a .doc and then print as a PDF, but the result isn't usable. The read aloud function regularly spells out words and misses whole sections.

Here are the relevant outputs of system.log from console.app:

Sep  1 19:53:59 MacPandaPro AdobeCRDaemon[5269]: Starting CRDaemon

Sep  1 19:54:25 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: BUG in libdispatch client: kevent[EVFILT_MACHPORT] monitored resource vanished before the source cancel handler was invoked

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: Starting updater process for product with registration plist com.adobe.acrobat.dc

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: The Updater application has been verified

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: Checking updates for the product

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: The return code after checking for updates is 1

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: Starting updater process for product with registration plist com.adobe.acrobat.dc

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: The Updater application has been verified

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: Checking updates for the product

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: ARM Helper exit with status 0

Sep  1 19:54:33 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: ARM Framework Log: Check for updates has been completed. The status returned is 0

Sep  1 19:54:44 MacPandaPro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.quicklook[5283]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.quicklook

Sep  1 19:54:46 MacPandaPro Creative Cloud[5284]: AdobeCrashReporterInitialize: executionTime = 0.005800 seconds

Sep  1 19:54:46 MacPandaPro AdobeCRDaemon[5285]: Starting CRDaemon

Sep  1 19:54:47 MacPandaPro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.adobe.acc.AdobeDesktopService.20916.B0F872FA-8B70-4029-BAD0-8A8BBE7C01B4[5288]): Service exited with abnormal code: 5

Sep  1 19:54:49 MacPandaPro Creative Cloud[5284]: Bartender: Loaded BartenderHelperTwoOneThree

Sep  1 19:57:19 MacPandaPro diagnosticd[5293]: Send_stream_Request, connecting to Streaming server

Sep  1 19:57:19 MacPandaPro diagnosticd[5293]: System mode client started - Console (5291) - mode: 0x8

Sep  1 19:57:27 MacPandaPro Console[5291]: BUG in libdispatch client: kevent[EVFILT_VNODE] monitored resource vanished before the source cancel handler was invoked

Sep  1 19:57:59 MacPandaPro AdobeAcrobat[5267]: Encoding = 0

Sep  1 19:58:18 MacPandaPro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.19148[5267]): Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11 sent by exc handler[0]

Sep  1 19:58:18 MacPandaPro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.ReportCrash[5296]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.ReportCrash

Sep  1 19:58:18 MacPandaPro AdobeCRDaemon[5269]: Found Non empty list in getCrashWindowId thus processing further

Sep  1 19:58:18 MacPandaPro AdobeCRDaemon[5269]:  WindowId before Returning from GetCrashWindowId : 12675

Sep  1 19:58:54 MacPandaPro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.quicklook[5316]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.quicklook

Sep  1 19:59:00 MacPandaPro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent): Unknown key for integer: _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit

And the outputs of the Apple error log are in this pastebin.

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm off to go reenable SIP, since I totally forgot about turning it off!

Edit: Just tried it on my work PC running Win 7. It crashed as well.

[a_C_student]

Yep, crashes for me too. Don't know why and can't seem to fix it. Do you have access to the source document? If so, you can try exporting or converting from the source document to a tagged PDF as a starting point. You will likely have lots of hand-tagging clean up work to do on a large fancy-formatted document like this one.

[devinradcliffe]

Update: I just got in touch with our distributor and they sent me a new zip of the document separated by section. I was able to tag each section except the table of contents and combine them all together. So my problem is solved now by this workaround. I imagine it might work if I extracted and deleted the offending section and tried it again, but I don't want to.

Still bizarre that the ToC on this particular book causes so much trouble after I'd done exactly the same process with four other texts from the same publisher!

[a_C_student]

Glad you got it solved, just curious what exactly does solved mean? If you want the book to be accessible - that is, conforming to ISO 14289 and/or WCAG 2.0 - so that assistive technology (AT) users can comprehend it, auto-tagging is just not going to get you all the way there. To see what I mean, try using one of the free screen reader emulators like Callas PDFgoHTML, VIP from the Swiss Association of and for the Blind, and the ones built into PAC 1.3 and PAC 2 from Access for All (Google will find these easily - sorry I do not know if Mac versions are available). Or use real AT like NVDA (free) or JAWS ($$). Do not rely on Acrobat's Read Out Loud - it is not real AT and kinda sucks.

[devinradcliffe]

It's a less rigorous case than that. I just have a large number of junior high students who need help with non-fiction comprehension. All they need is the ability to click on a paragraph and have it read to them. Read Out Loud isn't perfect but it has a great blend of low friction, cost, cross platform support and ease of use that's a good fit for this case. I'm sure there are much better solutions out there for people with visual impairments but there are just only so many hours in the day for me to implement things, unfortunately.

[AMu · Accepted solution]

With the latest release of Acrobat on 13th Feb, 2018, this issue has been addressed.

If your product is not already updated, you can manually do so from within the product.  Click on the menu Help-> Check for updates.