Content is tagged or artifacted
PAC fails “Content is tagged or artifacted” when page content is neither tagged nor marked as decoration. What it means and how to fix it.
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This message comes from PAC (PDF Accessibility Checker).
Content is tagged or artifacted is a PDF/UA check in PAC, the free PDF Accessibility Checker. It fails when some text, images or lines on a page are neither tagged as real content nor marked as an artifact, which is decoration that screen readers skip. PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1), the international standard for accessible PDFs, says every piece of page content must be one or the other, so a single stray mark is enough to fail the check.
What this means
An accessible PDF carries a hidden structure: tags, the labels that tell assistive technology what each part of the page is, such as a heading, a paragraph or a figure. Everything drawn on a page has to belong to one of two groups:
- Real content is connected to a tag, so screen readers read it as part of the document.
- Artifacts are page furniture with no meaning of their own: running headers and footers, page numbers, rules, background shapes and watermarks. They're marked so assistive technology skips them.
PAC reports this error for content that's in neither group. It shows the check among its PDF/UA content results, which is why many people search for it as "PDF/UA content". A closely related problem is content that's in both groups at once, such as an artifact nested inside a tagged paragraph. Assistive technology can't tell whether to read it or skip it, and PDF/UA doesn't allow it either.
The usual causes are:
- Text, stamps, headers or page numbers added in Acrobat after the file was tagged.
- Pages inserted from an untagged PDF.
- Invisible objects from the authoring app, such as white boxes, empty text boxes and stray spaces.
- Table borders, underlines and shading that an older export didn't mark as decoration.
Why it matters
Untagged content behaves unpredictably. Some screen readers skip it, so a listener misses a deadline or phone number that was added late. Others read it in the wrong place, so a stray page number interrupts a sentence. People who use screen readers or braille displays end up with a different document from everyone else. That breaks WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1, Info and Relationships, which asks that structure shown visually is also available to assistive technology.
How to fix it in Acrobat Pro and re-check in PAC
- In PAC, open the detailed results for this check and note which pages are affected.
- In Acrobat Pro, open the Tags panel. It's called Accessibility tags in newer versions; in older versions choose View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Tags.
- From the Tags panel's options menu, choose Find, set it to look for unmarked (untagged) content, and search the whole document. Acrobat highlights each item it finds.
- If the item is real content, choose Tag Element, pick the right tag type, then drag the new tag to its correct place in the tag tree.
- If the item is decoration, mark it as an artifact. In the Reading Order tool (Fix reading order in newer versions), draw a box around it and choose Background/Artifact. Or right-click its tag in the Tags panel and choose Change Tag to Artifact.
- If artifacts and tags are badly tangled on one page, it can be faster to clear that page's structure in the Reading Order tool and tag the page again. This removes earlier work on the page, so try it on a copy first.
- Run Acrobat's accessibility check again (its Tagged content rule should pass), save the file, then open it in PAC and confirm this check passes.
Fix it in the source file
Most stray content starts in the authoring app, so fixing it there stops the error from coming back with the next version of the document.
- Word: put running text and page numbers in the real header and footer (Insert > Header or Footer), and mark purely decorative pictures as decorative in the Alt Text pane. Microsoft documents that current versions of Word export headers, footers, decorative objects, underlines and paragraph borders as artifacts. Save with File > Save As > PDF and, under Options, keep Document structure tags for accessibility turned on. Printing to PDF drops the tags.
- InDesign: keep running heads and page numbers on parent pages, set decorative paragraph styles to export as Artifact in Export Tagging, and turn on Create Tagged PDF when you export.
- Any app: make late changes in the source and export again, rather than adding text or stamps in Acrobat.
Fix it automatically with Includoc
Includoc fixes this automatically. We tag real content, mark page furniture such as rules, backgrounds, running headers and page numbers as artifacts, and separate any content that's marked both ways. Then we run the PDF/UA checks again to check that nothing is left unmarked.
Deciding what counts as decoration takes judgment, so check the numbered reading order on the review screen. Anything meaningful, such as a "Draft" label that readers need to hear, should appear in that order. If a document is high stakes and you want a specialist to confirm it, choose the human-verified tier.
Upload your PDF to fix this automatically
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Standards
This page covers two rules. The first is the problem PAC reports with this message. The second is the related "mixed" problem, where artifacts and tagged content overlap.
| Standard or tool | Reference |
|---|---|
| WCAG 2.1 | |
| PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) | Clause 7.1 |
| Matterhorn Protocol | Checkpoint 01-005 |
| PAC wording | Content is tagged or artifacted |
| Acrobat rule | Tagged content |
| Standard or tool | Reference |
|---|---|
| WCAG 2.1 | |
| PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) | Clause 7.1 |
| Matterhorn Protocol | Checkpoint 01-003, Checkpoint 01-004 |
Related errors
- Figure tag: images that carry meaning need a correct
Figuretag, and decorative ones should be artifacts. - Logical Reading Order – Needs manual check: once everything is tagged, the tags still have to be in a sensible order.
New to tags? Read What is a tagged PDF?, or check a PDF free to see which pages have unmarked content.
Related
- Figure tag
What a correct Figure tag needs under PDF/UA: alt text, a bounding box, the right content and the right place. How to fix Figure tag errors in PAC.
- Logical Reading Order – Needs manual check
Why Acrobat always says “Logical Reading Order – Needs manual check”, how to check reading order yourself, and how to fix tags that are out of order.
- What is a tagged PDF? Tags, the tag tree and how to check them
A tagged PDF has hidden structure that tells screen readers what each part is. Learn the common tags, artifacts, role maps and how to view and fix tags.