Adobe Acrobat Reader Accessibility: Links

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Overview

For URLs to be accessible to screen readers, they must be active links that are correctly tagged in the PDF. To help with repetitive links, ensure there is a way to skip over them. The link text should be unique and meaningful when read out of context.  

Considerations

Descriptive: the URL should be embedded into the PDF. The text should be descriptive and relate to the context of the link. 

Avoid using the full URL: You should avoid using the full URL when possible. URLs can be highly repetitive, long and can interfere with using a screen reader.  

Visually distinct format: Links should be distinct from plain text. Utilize consistent formatting throughout to identify links.

  

Creating Accessible Links Video

 

Making Links Accessible Steps

  1. Select Edit
  2. Click Link in the toolbar
  3. Choose Add/Edit Link
    Editing pane, user selected link and link option pane populated to the right.
  4. Draw or edit (for existing links) the link area
    1. For Existing Links select the white dots and drag the link boundaries to fit the text you'd like to associate with it.
      Small blue outline of existing link, light blue rectangle extends to cover new space that the link will occupy.

    2. For New Links click and drag to cover the area you'd like the link to occupy.
      Blue rectangle showing where the link will be active, red rectangle outlining it to make it distinctive against the paragraph text.

  5. Set link action and display properties.
  6. Navigate to the Edit tab
  7. Select Text
  8. Set the text inside of your link boundaries to be visually distinguishable via color and underlining.
    Link text is set to blue and is underlined.

 

Link Tagging

  1. Within the Tags tree right click the tag that you are verifying is associated with a link. If you are not sure which tag is the link, clicking on the tags within the Accessibility Tags Panes will outline each figure in purple. 

  1. Open the Accessibility Tags Pane
  2. Navigate to the Link tag - it may be nested under a <P> tag
  3. Ensure the link is tagged as a <Link>, and is nester inside a container (paragraph, list item, section, article)
    Screenshot of tagging pane showing Link tag nested under paragraph tag.

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