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Content is neither tagged nor marked as artifact

In an accessible PDF, every piece of page content is either real content in the tag tree or an artifact, such as a page number or a decorative line, that assistive technology may ignore. Content that is neither, or tagged content nested inside an artifact, is reported as “Tagged content – Failed” by Acrobat and as rule 7.1-3, 7.1-1 or 7.1-2 by automated PDF/UA-1 checkers.

Updated

Messages you may see

  • Acrobat Accessibility Checker: Tagged content - Failed (All page content is tagged)
  • PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) rule 7.1-1: Content marked as Artifact should not be present inside tagged content
  • PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) rule 7.1-2: Tagged content should not be present inside content marked as Artifact
  • PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) rule 7.1-3: Content shall be marked as Artifact or tagged as real content
  • PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) rule 7.20-1: A conforming file shall not contain any reference XObjects
  • PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) rule 7.20-2: The content of Form XObjects shall be incorporated into structure elements according to ISO 32000-1:2008, 14.7.2
  • PDF/UA-2 (ISO 14289-2) rule 8.2.2-1: Content that is not considered real shall be an artifact
  • Matterhorn Protocol 1.1, 01-005: Content is neither marked as Artifact nor tagged as real content.
  • Matterhorn Protocol 1.1, 01-003: Content marked as Artifact is present inside tagged content.
  • Matterhorn Protocol 1.1, 01-004: Tagged content is present inside content marked as Artifact.
  • Matterhorn Protocol 1.1, 30-002: Form XObject contains MCIDs and is referenced more than once.

What the rule requires

PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1, clause 7.1) divides all page content into two kinds. Real content is wrapped in a marked-content sequence with an identifier (MCID) that a structure element points to. Artifacts are wrapped in an /Artifact sequence and are not part of the tag tree. Automated checkers test this with three rules:

  • Rule 7.1-3: every piece of content is either tagged or marked as artifact. This is the most common failure.
  • Rule 7.1-1: no artifact sequence sits inside tagged content.
  • Rule 7.1-2: no tagged content sits inside an artifact sequence.

Clause 7.20 adds two rules for XObjects, which are reusable content blocks: reference XObjects (content imported from another PDF file) are not allowed at all (rule 7.20-1), and a form XObject whose content carries MCIDs must not be drawn more than once, because one MCID can belong to only one place in the tag tree (rule 7.20-2). For PDF/UA-2 the main rule is 8.2.2-1.

In the Matterhorn Protocol 1.1 these are failure conditions 01-003, 01-004 and 01-005 of checkpoint 01 (Real content tagged), and 30-001 and 30-002 of checkpoint 30 (XObjects). Conditions 01-001 (an artifact is tagged as real content) and 01-002 (real content is marked as artifact) need a human decision: software cannot tell whether a line of text is meaningful.

Typical artifacts are running headers and footers, page numbers, decorative lines and backgrounds, and watermarks without meaning. Whether something is decoration or information is a content decision that a person has to make.

Why it matters

Screen readers that follow the tag tree skip untagged content entirely, or, depending on the software, read it at the end of the page or in an unexpected place. If the untagged content is a paragraph, a stamp with a date or a note added after tagging, blind users never learn that it exists.

Nested content causes the opposite problem: text inside an artifact is hidden even though it is tagged, and decorative content inside a tag is read aloud. Reflow and export to other formats also rely on this separation, so content can disappear or appear twice when the page is reflowed for magnification.

Common causes

  • Content was added after the PDF was tagged: page numbers, stamps, comments flattened into the page, Bates numbers, watermarks or text edited in Acrobat.
  • Several PDFs were merged and only some of them were tagged.
  • In Word, images, shapes or text boxes use text wrapping other than In Line with Text and end up outside the reading order. Word's Accessibility Checker reports such objects.
  • Autotagging in Acrobat skipped some content, often small text, text along paths or text in graphics.
  • Imposition or layout tools placed whole pages or logos as form XObjects that are drawn several times.

Example

Page content streams show the problem directly. Here a footer is drawn without any marking:

BT /F1 9 Tf 72 40 Td (Page 3 of 12) Tj ET
Failing: footer text is neither tagged nor an artifact

In the fixed version the footer is a pagination artifact, and the body text is tagged with an MCID that a P structure element references:

/Artifact << /Type /Pagination /Subtype /Footer >> BDC
  BT /F1 9 Tf 72 40 Td (Page 3 of 12) Tj ET
EMC

/P << /MCID 0 >> BDC
  BT /F1 11 Tf 72 700 Td (The council decided ...) Tj ET
EMC

% structure element that owns MCID 0 on this page
21 0 obj
<< /Type /StructElem /S /P /P 20 0 R /Pg 8 0 R /K 0 >>
endobj
Fixed: artifact and tagged real content

How to fix it

Microsoft Word

  1. Run Review > Check Accessibility and work through objects that are reported as not inline. Set their text wrapping to In Line with Text, or place them in the text where they belong.
  2. Mark purely decorative images and shapes as decorative: right-click > View Alt Text (Office 2019 to 2024: Edit Alt Text) and check Mark as decorative (Office 2019 to 2024: Decorative).
  3. Put repeating page content such as page numbers into Word's header and footer areas rather than into text boxes on each page.
  4. Save again as PDF with Document structure tags for accessibility checked, and check the result in Acrobat's Content panel.

Adobe InDesign

  1. Open the Articles panel (Window > Articles), drag all real content into articles in reading order and choose Use for Tagging Order in Tagged PDF from the panel menu.
  2. Mark decorative objects as artifacts: select them and choose Object > Object Export Options > Tagged PDF > Apply Tag: Artifact.
  3. Map paragraph styles for running headers or footers that should not be read to the PDF tag Artifact (Paragraph Style Options > Export Tagging).
  4. Export with Create Tagged PDF.

Adobe Acrobat Pro

  1. Open the Content panel (hamburger menu on Windows or View menu on macOS > Show/Hide > Side panels > Content). Right-click content that is decoration and choose Create Artifact.
  2. Tag real content with All tools > Prepare for accessibility > Fix reading order: draw a selection around the content and choose the tag type, for example Text/Paragraph or Figure. For decoration, choose Background/Artifact in the same dialog.
  3. Alternatively, select the content, right-click the target element in the Accessibility tags panel and choose Create Tag From Selection.
  4. Run the check again. Items such as comments, links and annotations do not always appear in the tag tree; Adobe recommends Find in the options menu of the Tags panel to locate them.

Problems with form XObjects (rules 7.20-1 and 7.20-2) cannot be fixed with these panels. Create the PDF again from the source, or without the imposition or stamping step that introduced them.

Check your PDF

Upload the fixed file to see which machine-checkable criteria it meets now. The report lists the remaining problems with their pages.

Open the checker

Questions

Should page numbers and running headers be tagged?
Usually not. Repeating page furniture is normally marked as a pagination artifact; the Matterhorn Protocol (checkpoint 18) expects headers and footers to be artifacts. If a header contains information that appears nowhere else, tag it as real content instead.
Can I simply mark everything that fails as artifact?
No. That removes the check failure but hides the content from screen reader users. Only content without meaning, or with its meaning available elsewhere, may be an artifact.

Sources

  1. ISO 14289-1:2014 Document management applications – Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility – Part 1: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/UA-1) – International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Checked on 7 November 2026.
  2. ISO 14289-2:2024 Document management applications – Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility – Part 2: Use of ISO 32000-2 (PDF/UA-2) – International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Checked on 7 November 2026.
  3. The Matterhorn Protocol 1.1 – PDF Association. Checked on 7 November 2026.
  4. Matterhorn Protocol checks (list of checkpoints and failure conditions) – PDF Association (Tagged PDF School). Checked on 7 November 2026.
  5. PDF4: Hiding decorative images with the Artifact tag in PDF documents – W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WCAG 2.2 Techniques). Checked on 7 November 2026.
  6. Create and verify PDF accessibility, Acrobat Pro – Adobe (Acrobat User Guide), 23 July 2025. Checked on 7 November 2026.
  7. Reading Order tool for PDFs (Adobe Acrobat Pro) – Adobe (Acrobat User Guide), 9 May 2025. Checked on 7 November 2026.
  8. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels (Adobe Acrobat Pro) – Adobe (Acrobat User Guide), 3 May 2025. Checked on 7 November 2026.
  9. Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities – Microsoft Support. Checked on 7 November 2026.
  10. Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object – Microsoft Support. Checked on 8 November 2026.
  11. Creating accessible PDFs – Adobe (InDesign User Guide), 24 May 2023. Checked on 7 November 2026.
  12. Set reading order in InDesign – Adobe (InDesign User Guide), 2 June 2026. Checked on 7 November 2026.