Matterhorn 13-008 · PDF/UA-1 UA1:7.3-4

Drop caps and wordmarks: Figures that need ActualText

A 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.

What a screen reader actually does

The word is announced as "graphic" and breaks the sentence it belongs to.

What the condition is about

Some images are text. The commonest:

• A drop cap drawn as an ornamental image — the W that starts When the board met in March.
• A wordmark used inside a sentence, where the logo is the word.
• Text converted to outlines — a heading in a licensed display face turned into shapes for print.
• A signature or handwritten line that the document needs read as words.

A sighted reader reads these as text without noticing. To everything else they are graphics. PDF/UA-1 clause 7.3 asks that a figure meant to be consumed primarily as text carry /ActualText — the characters it stands for — so it rejoins the text it belongs to:

/P
├── /Figure   /ActualText (W)          ← the ornamental capital
└── "hen the board met in March…"      ← MCID 4

The condition is that figure without /ActualText: undescribed, or — more often in remediated files — described with /Alt. The opposite mistake, a picture described with ActualText, is 13-005.

What the user hears

Without ActualText the word is broken at the image. If the figure has no description:

graphic … hen the board met in March

If it has /Alt (Decorative capital W):

graphic, Decorative capital W, hen the board met in March

The second is worse in a way that is easy to miss: it sounds conscientious, and it still leaves a listener to reassemble the first word of the chapter from a description and a fragment. Search the document for When and the first one is not found. Copy the paragraph and the first letter is missing.

With /ActualText (W), software that honours it — extraction, search, assistive technology — gets the letter as a letter, and the sentence can be read as written.

Where it comes from

Auto-tagging. Adobe’s own description of Automatically tag PDF, in Creating accessible PDFs, says it “may erroneously tag graphical characters within the text, such as drop caps, as figures instead of including them in the tag that represents the text block”.

Design for print. Display type converted to outlines so the file prints without the font; decorative initials placed as images; wordmarks dropped into running text.

Remediation that stops at Alt. A checker reports the figure as having no description, someone writes one, and the file passes. The right entry was the other one.

How to check it free

Search for the word. Ctrl/Cmd + F for a word that starts with a drop cap, or for a heading you suspect is outlined. If it is not found, the visible characters are not text.

Copy and paste the paragraph into a plain text editor. A missing first letter, or a missing heading, is this condition.

Acrobat Pro’s Tags panel. Turn on Highlight Content and look for a <Figure> whose highlight is a letter or a word. Open Options → Properties to see what the Tag panel of the Touch Up Properties dialog holds for it.

The machine-checkable rule for figures, 13-004, is satisfied by /Alt or /ActualText, so a validator that implements it passes the drop cap described as a picture. Deciding that a figure is text is a reading of the page.

How to fix it free

In the source, keep text as text. Use the application’s own drop cap feature, which sets a real character, rather than placing an image. Embed fonts rather than converting type to outlines. Then nothing needs ActualText at all.

In InDesign, when it has to be an image. Adobe’s Use tags for accessible PDFs in InDesign gives the steps:

1. View → Structure → Show Structure, and select the Figure element for the graphic in the Structure pane.
2. Choose New Attribute from the Structure pane menu.
3. In Name, type ActualText — Adobe’s note: “For images that display text as graphics (such as ornate drop caps), type ActualText in the Name field instead of Alt.”
4. In Value, type the characters the image shows, exactly: W, not decorative W.

In Acrobat Pro: we give no steps. Adobe’s Acrobat help documents the Alternate Text box of the Touch Up Properties dialog for figures and does not document setting ActualText. Writing /Alt (W) there keeps the letter audible and still breaks the word, so it is a stopgap, not the fix. If you cannot edit the source, report it as an open item rather than closing it with Alt. See ActualText in PDF.

What Taggart does

Taggart has no check for this condition, so it produces no finding and is not in the review queue. It is on the list of conditions Taggart asks you to confirm — I have checked these conditions by hand, or with another validator — before it writes the PDF/UA identifier, and the identifier waits until you have.

What it does around it, checked on generated files:

A drop cap described with Alt passes. 13-004 accepts /Alt or /ActualText; a <Figure> with /Alt (Decorative capital W) produces no finding at all.

The review queue writes Alt. A figure with no description at all is reported under 13-004 and goes to the queue’s description box. What you type there is written by the figure-alt-text repair as /Alt, and only /Alt. For a drop cap, typing the letter there gives you the stopgap above, not the fix — record the finding as Needs work, with the reason, and fix it at source.

The preview reads it as a graphic either way. The screen-reader preview announces a figure as graphic, then its /Alt, or its /ActualText when there is no /Alt:

graphic, Decorative capital W

It does not model a reader folding ActualText into the sentence, so it cannot show the difference this condition is about. The reading-order editor can: select the figure and its panel lists Alt and ActualText separately.

Outlined text is a case Taggart does not see at all. Paths are not glyphs, so there is no font for its font checks to report on, and its auto-tagger treats untagged vector paths as decoration and makes them artifacts — an outlined heading in an untagged file comes out of auto-tagging silent.

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.

Where this sits in the standards

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

• 13-005 ActualText used for a Figure for which alternative text is more appropriateActualText replaces the content for text-extraction purposes; Alt describes it. A photograph needs Alt. A drop cap or a glyph-as-image needs ActualText.
• 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.
• 13-007 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.
• 31-027 A font dictionary does not contain the ToUnicode entry and no exemption appliesA ToUnicode CMap is required unless the font uses MacRoman/MacExpert/WinAnsi encoding, or is a Type 1/Type 3 whose glyph names are all in the Adobe Glyph List or the Symbol set, or is a Type 0 whose descendant uses a standard Adobe character collection, or is a non-symbolic TrueType.

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.
• 13-005 ActualText used for a Figure for which alternative text is more appropriateActualText replaces the content for text-extraction purposes; Alt describes it. A photograph needs Alt. A drop cap or a glyph-as-image needs ActualText.
• 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.

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 2026-10-02. The Acrobat steps follow Adobe’s documentation and were not walked through by hand. Last updated 2026-10-02.