All real content must be tagged, decoration marked as artifact

PDF/UA check CONTENT_IS_TAGGED · Page content · severity Critical · PDF/UA 8.2.2 Real content

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Why it matters#

Every piece of real content needs a tag so screen readers know it exists. Decorative elements (borders, backgrounds) should be marked as Artifacts so they're skipped, avoiding clutter in the audio output.

What you will see#

Some page content sits outside the tag tree — screen readers will never reach it — or decorative marks are tagged as if they were content.

How to fix#

Enclose every piece of real content in a semantically appropriate structure element (P, H1-H6, Figure, Table, etc.) with a marked-content ID. Mark purely decorative content (borders, backgrounds, headers/footers) as an Artifact instead. In Acrobat: use the Reading Order tool to tag content or mark it as background/artifact.

Step-by-step guide#

1. If the document is entirely untagged, run All tools > Prepare for accessibility > Automatically tag PDF as a starting point, then review every generated tag - autotagging output always needs manual correction.
2. Open the Accessibility tags panel (View > Show/Hide > Side panels > Accessibility tags), open the panel options menu and choose Find > Unmarked Content to walk through every content object that is neither in a structure element nor marked as an artifact.
3. For each piece of real content, open All tools > Prepare for accessibility > Fix reading order (the Reading Order tool), drag a selection box around the content and assign the semantically correct type: Text/Paragraph, Heading 1-6, Figure, Table, Formula, or Reference.
4. For purely decorative content - page borders, background shading, repeated running headers and footers, watermarks, dividing rules - select it with the Reading Order tool and click Background/Artifact so it is explicitly excluded from the reading order.
5. Repair content that authoring split across pages or columns: a paragraph continuing onto the next page belongs in one P element, and a table spanning pages belongs in one Table element. Drag the continuation content into the existing tag in the Accessibility tags panel rather than leaving duplicate sibling elements.
6. For an image that only renders text with no illustrative purpose, tag it as a Span with an ActualText property (Tag properties > Actual Text) instead of a Figure.
7. Expand the corrected tags in the Accessibility tags panel and confirm each one encloses marked page content (an MCID), then check the tag order against the visual reading order.

Verify: Re-run the EQChecker scan: CONTENT_IS_TAGGED should report failed_objects 0 with no failed pages. In Acrobat, All tools > Prepare for accessibility > Check for accessibility should pass Tagged content.

Note: The check passes on either of two paths per PDF/UA-2 8.2.2: content is real and enclosed in a structure element with an MCID, or it is explicitly marked as an Artifact. Content merely absent from the structure tree fails. Clip-only paths that paint nothing (the re W n idiom) are not real content and are exempt. Images and vector drawings do not always require Figure - choose the element matching the semantics.

Fixing it in your authoring tool#

WCAG success criteria#

1.3.1 Info and Relationships — Level A#

Structure and relationships conveyed visually (headings, lists, tables, labels, groups) must also be available programmatically.

Understanding 1.3.1

Standards#

This check contributes to the following standards:

PDF/UA WCAG A EN 301 549

References#

• Matterhorn Protocol 1.1 — PDF Association
• Adobe — Create and verify accessible PDFs