The perplexed teacher seated the students in the classroom in random order, then called out the names by seat position. That's exactly what a screen reader does with a PDF document — it doesn't "see" the visual layout, it reads according to the Tags Tree. If the order in the tree doesn't match the logical order of the content, the user hears a confused version of the document, even if it looks perfect visually.
In short — what this guide covers
How to open the Tags panel in Acrobat
In current versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro, the fastest route is View ▸ Show/Hide ▸ Side Panels ▸ Accessibility Tags, or clicking the tag icon in the side toolbar if it already appears there. Once the panel opens, it displays a hierarchical tree of all the content in the document — headings, paragraphs, images, tables, and links — exactly like a folder tree in a file explorer.
If content doesn't appear in the Tags tree at all, that's a warning sign in itself: untagged content will usually not be accessible to screen readers at all, even if it looks fine on screen.
How to read the Tags tree
The order of tags in the tree is exactly the order in which a screen reader will read the document out loud — not right-to-left or top-to-bottom order on the screen, but the order of the list in the panel itself, top to bottom. This is the most important point to understand: two documents can look completely identical and sound completely different if the tag order is different.
A classic case: a document with a sidebar image (for example, a topic image or a quote box) that's positioned in the HTML/PDF before the main heading, even though visually it appears off to the side. A screen reader that encounters this order will read the image first, which confuses users who expect to start with the heading.
How to fix an incorrect tag order
When you spot a tag in the wrong place, in Acrobat you can drag it within the panel (drag and drop) to the correct position in the tree, or use cut-and-paste on the tag itself. It's important to drag the entire tag (including the sub-tags inside it) and not just part of it, or the sub-structure may fall apart.
- Select the problematic tag in the Tags panel.
- Drag it to the new position in the tree, watching the indicator line that shows where it will land.
- Release and check that the tag and its sub-tags moved together as one unit.
- Repeat the process for every out-of-place tag, until the tree order matches the logical reading order.
Rule of thumb: it's better to fix the order problem in the source document (Word, InDesign, etc.) and re-export, rather than fixing it again and again in Acrobat after every update. Fixing the Tags tree is best suited to final documents that won't change, or when there's no access to the source.
💡 Practical tip
After every change to the Tags tree, you can use the built-in "Read Out Loud" tool in Acrobat (View ▸ Read Out Loud) to hear how the document will actually sound, without needing separate screen reader software.
How to confirm the fix worked
After a round of fixes, it's a good idea to run the built-in accessibility check (Tools ▸ Accessibility ▸ Full Check) — it doesn't always catch subtle order problems, but it will identify missing or broken tags created during the dragging process. The final and most reliable step: an actual read-through with "Read Out Loud" or with a real screen reader, from the start of the document to the end.
Not sure whether the tag order in your documents is correct?
Our tool scans every document on your site and highlights reading-order and tagging problems — before a real user runs into them.
Scan your site for free ←