PDF4Sufficient technique WCAG 1.1.1 Level A Partly scanner-detectable

Hide decorative PDF images from screen readers

Purely decorative content in a PDF should be marked as an Artifact so assistive technology skips it. Background flourishes, watermark art, layout rules, and the repeated page furniture in headers and footers all qualify. An artifact is content wrapped in a marked-content sequence with the Artifact tag, which puts it outside the tag tree altogether, and it is the PDF equivalent of empty alt text in HTML. W3C publishes PDF4 as a sufficient technique, so artifacting the decoration satisfies the rule for that content, and it pairs with PDF1, which handles the images that do carry meaning. Acrobat Pro's Reading Order tool has a Background and Artifact button that does it in two clicks.

How we find it in an audit

We read the document with a screen reader and note anything announced that carries no information. Repeated "graphic" announcements are the giveaway. Then we reflow the document, which is the cheapest check there is, because decoration that is properly artifacted does not appear in the reflowed view. In Acrobat's Tags panel we confirm the decoration is artifacted rather than cluttering the tree as untagged figures.

How affected users experience it

Decoration that is not artifacted gets announced. "Graphic", "graphic", "graphic", on every page of a letterhead. In a long statement the reader wades through the same noise page after page, and eventually cannot tell which announcements might have actually mattered.

Passes vs. fails

Passes: alt text names the product. Fails: the file name is all there is.

Passes

The flourishes are marked as Artifacts with Acrobat Pro's Reading Order tool. Reflow the page now and they are gone, and a screen reader starts straight at "Dear Ms. Osei".

Fails

Every page of a law firm's letterhead template announces three untagged flourishes as "graphic" before the letter text starts.

How this gets tested

The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.

Element marked as decorative is not exposedA tool can check this
Image accessible name is descriptiveA tool finds candidates, you decide
Image button has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Image has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Link has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Object element rendering non-text content has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
SVG element with explicit role has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
Image not in the accessibility tree is decorativeA tool can check this

Other ways to satisfy this rule

39 guides on this site are filed under 1.1.1 Non-text Content. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule on its own. Implement it correctly, in a way your readers' software actually supports, and the rule is met.

This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique PDF4: Hiding decorative images with the Artifact tag in PDF documents. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.