Matterhorn 13-005 · PDF/UA-1 UA1:7.3-4
ActualText on a photograph: when a Figure needs Alt instead
ActualText replaces the content for text-extraction purposes; Alt describes it. A photograph needs Alt. A drop cap or a glyph-as-image needs ActualText.
The condition, as the protocol states it. “ActualText used for a <Figure> for which alternative text is more appropriate.”
Matterhorn Protocol 1.1, checkpoint 13, index 13-005, section UA1:7.3-4. The protocol marks this as requiring human judgement.
What a screen reader actually does
ActualText is substituted into the text stream, so a described photograph is announced as if it were literal document text.
Two entries that look alike
A <Figure> can carry two different kinds of text, and they are not interchangeable:
% A photograph: described.
<< /Type /StructElem
/S /Figure
/Alt (Three engineers inspecting the new turbine hall.)
/K [ 7 ]
>>
% An ornamental drop cap: replaced.
<< /Type /StructElem
/S /Figure
/ActualText (W)
/K [ 12 ]
>>/Alt is an alternate description. It tells someone who cannot see the content what it is. It belongs to images that carry meaning but no characters: photographs, charts, diagrams, maps.
/ActualText is replacement text. It says these marks on the page are these characters, and it is meant to be used wherever the document’s text is wanted: extraction, copying, search, and what a screen reader reads as the words on the page. It belongs to graphics that are text — a drop cap, a wordmark, a heading converted to outlines.
The condition is the first kind of image with the second kind of entry: a photograph, chart or diagram whose description has been put in /ActualText. PDF/UA-1 clause 7.3 covers both directions; this is the one where the description is presented as text. The opposite — text presented as a picture — is 13-008.
What breaks
The description stops being a description and becomes, as far as the file is concerned, part of the page’s text. Software that honours ActualText — for extraction, copying, reflow, read-aloud — is entitled to put it in the middle of the paragraph as though it were printed there, because that is what the entry claims.
For a screen reader user the effect depends on the reader and the viewer, but the principle of ActualText is substitution: it asks the reader to treat the string as what the page says. The likely result is the sentence running straight on:
The hall opened in March. Three engineers inspecting the new turbine hall. Output rose eleven per cent in the first quarter.
Nothing marks the middle sentence as a picture. The listener has no way to tell that the document contains a photograph, that the sentence is somebody’s description of it, or that it is not the author’s own text.
Where it comes from
A description written in the wrong box. Tools that expose both fields side by side invite it, and the names do not help: Actual Text sounds like the place for the real description.
A technique copied from the right case to the wrong one. ActualText is the correct answer for a drop cap or a logo that spells a word, and remediation guidance says so. Applied to every image, it turns descriptions into text.
Scripts and batch tools that fill one entry for every figure without distinguishing what the figure is.
How to check it free
There is no automatic test; this is a reading of each figure.
Acrobat Pro’s Tags panel. For each <Figure>, choose Properties from the Options menu and look at the Tag panel of the Touch Up Properties dialog. A figure whose description sits anywhere other than Alternate Text needs a second look.
Listen to it. Read the page with a screen reader. A sentence of description that arrives as running text, with no graphic before it, is worth tracing back to its tag.
The machine-checkable rule for figures, 13-004, asks for /Alt or /ActualText, so a validator that implements it is satisfied by either. No checker asks which one is right for the image.
How to fix it free, in Acrobat Pro
Adobe’s help documents the Alternate Text box of the Touch Up Properties dialog; it does not document editing a tag’s ActualText. So the documented route is to replace the tag rather than to clear one field. These steps follow Adobe’s Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels and Reading Order tool for PDFs. Save a copy first; Adobe notes that undo is not supported for every Reading Order operation.
- In the Tags panel, select the
<Figure>and note where it sits in the tree. - Options → Delete Tag. The image stays on the page; it is now untagged.
- Open the Reading Order tool (
All tools → Prepare for accessibility → Reading Order), drag to select the image, and click Figure. - Right-click the region → Edit Alternate Text, enter the description, and click OK.
- Back in the Tags panel, drag the new
<Figure>to the place the old one had.
If the source document exists, fix it there: put the description in the authoring tool’s alt text field and re-export. See Alt text that works and ActualText in PDF.
What Taggart does
Taggart has no check for this condition, so it never produces a finding and never appears in the review queue. It is on the list of conditions Taggart asks you to confirm before it writes the PDF/UA identifier — one box, I have checked these conditions by hand, or with another validator, for all of them — and the identifier waits until you have. The reading of each figure is yours.
Two things it does are worth knowing because they make it easy to miss:
The alt-text check accepts ActualText. 13-004 passes a <Figure> that has either /Alt or /ActualText. A photograph described in the wrong entry is, as far as that check is concerned, described.
The screen-reader preview reads both the same way. For a figure, the preview announces graphic, then the description — taken from /Alt, or from /ActualText when there is no /Alt. On our generated files, the same photograph described both ways produced the identical line:
graphic, Three engineers inspecting the new turbine hall
So the preview cannot show you the difference either. The place that does is the reading-order editor: select an element and its panel lists Alt and ActualText separately.
When Taggart itself writes a description — from the review queue, through the figure-alt-text repair — it writes /Alt, and only /Alt.
How Taggart handles it
No software can decide this one, and Taggart has no check for it, so it never appears among the findings or in the review queue. It is on the list of conditions Taggart asks you to confirm by hand before it writes the PDF/UA claim into the file — the claim waits until you have.
Whatever Taggart changes, the page still looks identical. Fixes edit the PDF object model, not the content streams, and every remediation is re-rendered and compared against the original at structural similarity ≥ 0.999 before you get the file back. A tool that quietly reflows your document is worse than no tool.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Alt and ActualText?
Alt is a description of the content, for someone who cannot see it. ActualText is a replacement for the content: the exact characters the marks on the page stand for. A photograph has no characters, so it can only be described — Alt. A drop cap is a character, so it is replaced — ActualText, which is the opposite case, 13-008.
Does it matter if the words are good either way?
Yes. The same sentence means different things in the two entries. As ActualText it claims to be part of the document's text: the string that copying, extraction and assistive technology should use in place of what is painted. As Alt it is a description of a picture. A description presented as text is a false statement about what the page says.
Can a Figure have both?
It can, and for most figures it should not. A figure that is genuinely text — a wordmark — wants ActualText for the word, and may carry Alt as well. A photograph wants Alt only. ActualText on a photograph is the failure whether or not Alt is also there.
Will Taggart flag it?
No. A Figure with ActualText and no Alt passes Taggart's alt-text check (13-004), because ActualText satisfies that requirement, and Taggart has no check for which of the two is appropriate. You find these by reading the Figure tags.
Where this sits in the standards
| Standard | Reference |
|---|---|
| Matterhorn Protocol 1.1 | Checkpoint 13 (Graphics), index 13-005 |
| PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) | Clause 7.3-4 |
| WCAG 2.1 | 1.1.1 Non-text Content — Level A |
| EN 301 549 / Section 508 / ADA Title II | All three point at WCAG 2.1 Level AA for non-web documents, so a Level A or AA criterion here is in scope for each of them. |
Guides that cover it
- ActualText in PDF: what it is and when to use itActualText changes what a PDF says without changing how it looks. When it is the right fix, how it differs from Alt, and the mistakes that silence text.
- How to add and write alt text for images in a PDFAdding alt text to a PDF image starts with deciding whether it is informative. Then what to say, what to leave out, how to add it free, and where AI helps.
Related conditions
- 13-008 ActualText not present when a Figure is intended to be consumed primarily as textA drop cap, a logo that is a word, an image of a signature block — content that is text — needs ActualText so it flows into the text stream.
- 13-004 Figure tag alternative or replacement text missingA Figure element has neither /Alt nor /ActualText. Every Figure must have one or the other; if the image is decorative it should be an artifact instead of a Figure.
- 13-002 A link with a meaningful background lacks alternative text for bothAn image link — a button, a logo that navigates — needs alternative text that conveys both what the graphic shows and where the link goes.
- 13-007 A more accessible representation is not usedA data table rendered as a picture, or body text set as an image, when real text and real table structure were available.
Other conditions in checkpoint 13
Checkpoint 13 covers graphics. These are its other failure conditions; the ones without a link are in the rule set but do not have a written page yet.
- 13-001 Graphics objects are not tagged with a Figure tagAn image or vector drawing that carries meaning is not inside a Figure element. Either it is untagged, or it has been swept into a paragraph.
- 13-002 A link with a meaningful background lacks alternative text for bothAn image link — a button, a logo that navigates — needs alternative text that conveys both what the graphic shows and where the link goes.
- 13-003 A caption is not tagged with a Caption tag"Figure 3: Quarterly revenue" is tagged as a paragraph rather than as a Caption associated with its figure or table.
- 13-004 Figure tag alternative or replacement text missingA Figure element has neither /Alt nor /ActualText. Every Figure must have one or the other; if the image is decorative it should be an artifact instead of a Figure.
- 13-006 A graphic with meaning only as part of a group is tagged on its ownA chart built from dozens of separate vector paths has been tagged as dozens of Figures instead of one. Each fragment is meaningless alone.
- 13-007 A more accessible representation is not usedA data table rendered as a picture, or body text set as an image, when real text and real table structure were available.
- 13-008 ActualText not present when a Figure is intended to be consumed primarily as textA drop cap, a logo that is a word, an image of a signature block — content that is text — needs ActualText so it flows into the text stream.
Check your own file. Taggart’s validator is free and unlimited — 75 of the 87 Matterhorn conditions software can decide, with the other 12 listed for you to confirm; no watermark, no expiry, and no account needed up to 60 pages.
This condition needs a person’s judgement, so there was nothing for a tool to check. Written from ISO 14289-1 and the Matterhorn Protocol on . The Acrobat steps follow Adobe’s documentation and were not walked through by hand. Last updated .