How to Artifact Leading Dots in a Table of Contents for Accessibility in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

In today’s post, we dive into the process of how to artifact leading dots within a table of contents using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. While those dots might look fine visually, they can be quite disruptive when read aloud by screen readers.

Video Guide

To begin, fire up Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and head to the “Prepare for Accessibility” tools. From there, select the option “Fix Reading Order.” This nifty tool allows you to draw a box around those dots, marking them as text paragraphs.

By doing this, you’re essentially segregating the dots into a separate tag, making it easier to identify and handle them. Once you’ve marked them, it’s time to artifact those leading dots. Simply select the object in the tags panel, right-click, and choose “Change Tag to Artifact.” Under artifact type, opt for “Page” and hit OK.

Voila! The dots are now artifacts, detached from the main content. You can then proceed to tidy up by deleting any extraneous tags and elements, ensuring a clean and streamlined table of contents.

I frequently employ this technique to eliminate unwanted content from PDFs. Sometimes, the content is already neatly separated, but other times, like in our example, the dots are intertwined with the text. By leveraging the reading order tool, I was able to isolate and artifact them, improving overall accessibility.

Let me be your champion for inclusion. I offer tailored solutions (and self-paced courses!) to ensure your documents meet and exceed compliance expectations. For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel: The Accessibility Guy on YouTube. Subscribe for regular updates!