Printer marks must be artifacts

PDF/UA check PRINTERMARK_ARTIFACT · Annotations · severity Medium · PDF/UA 8.9.2.4.14 Printer's mark

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Why it matters#

Printer marks are production artifacts not meant for readers. Including them in the structure tree exposes meaningless content to assistive technology.

What you will see#

Registration or crop marks appear in the structure tree as if they were content.

How to fix#

Remove the PrinterMark annotation's OBJR from the structure tree and mark the annotation as an artifact. If the printer marks are not needed for production, delete the annotation entirely.

Step-by-step guide#

1. Open the Accessibility tags panel (View > Show/Hide > Side panels > Accessibility tags), choose Options > Find, set the search to Annotations, and step through until the PrinterMark annotation (registration, crop, or colour-bar marks) is highlighted on the page.
2. Delete the OBJR node referencing the PrinterMark annotation, plus its wrapping structure element if it holds nothing else. If the check still fails, the annotation's StructParent entry remains - Acrobat does not delete that entry, and EQChecker fails any PrinterMark that still carries a structure tree reference - so delete the annotation itself or re-export without printer marks (next step).
3. If the printer marks are no longer needed for production, delete the annotation in Acrobat with the Select Object tool, or re-export the file without printer marks (Acrobat adds them via All tools > Use print production > Add printer marks).

Verify: Re-run the EQChecker scan; PRINTERMARK_ARTIFACT should report zero errors.

Note: 8.9.2.4.14 requires a printer's mark annotation to be an artifact, and 8.9.2.2 lets artifact annotations either stay out of the structure tree or sit inside Artifact structure elements. EQChecker passes only the first form: a PrinterMark with any structure tree reference fails, even one enclosed in an Artifact element, while one left on the page but outside the tree passes.

WCAG success criteria#

No WCAG success criterion maps cleanly to this check — it is a PDF/UA structural requirement. The PDF/UA clause above is the normative reference.

Standards#

This check contributes to the following standards:

PDF/UA