How to Create Tagged (Accessible) PDFs in LaTeX
Accessible PDFs use a tag structure that allows screen readers to interpret the document's content, reading order, and alternative text for figures. This is increasingly required by journals, universities, and government agencies. LaTeX has been historically weak in this area, but modern packages like tagpdf and the 2024+ LaTeX kernel improvements are changing that. Bibby AI integrates these modern accessibility features and can generate tagged PDFs automatically — a capability that's still experimental or unsupported on Overleaf.
Enable Basic PDF Tagging with tagpdf
Use the tagpdf package to add structure tags to your PDF output, making it accessible to screen readers:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tagpdf}
% Activate tagging
\tagpdfsetup{
activate-all, % Enable all tagging features
interwordspace=true, % Tag spaces between words
}
% Set PDF metadata
\hypersetup{
pdftitle={My Accessible Paper},
pdfauthor={Author Name},
pdflang={en-US},
}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\title{An Accessible LaTeX Document}
\author{Author Name}
\maketitle
\section{Introduction}
This document is tagged for accessibility. Screen readers can
navigate the heading structure and read the content in order.
\section{Results}
Our findings show significant improvement.
\end{document}Add Alt Text to Figures and Configure Reading Order
Provide alternative text for images and ensure the logical reading order matches the visual layout:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tagpdf}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\tagpdfsetup{activate-all, interwordspace=true}
\begin{document}
\section{Figures with Alt Text}
% Method 1: Using tagpdf's alt text support
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\tagmcbegin{tag=Figure, alt={Bar chart showing experiment results:
Group A scored 85 percent, Group B scored 72 percent,
and the control group scored 61 percent.}}
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{results-chart.pdf}
\tagmcend
\caption{Experiment results by group.}
\label{fig:results}
\end{figure}
% Decorative images should be marked as artifacts
\tagmcbegin{artifact=true}
\includegraphics[width=1cm]{decorative-line.pdf}
\tagmcend
\section{Tables with Headers}
% Tables need proper header markup for accessibility
\begin{table}[h]
\centering
\caption{Summary statistics}
\begin{tabular}{lcc}
\hline
\textbf{Group} & \textbf{Mean} & \textbf{SD} \\ \hline
A & 85.2 & 4.3 \\
B & 72.1 & 5.8 \\
Control & 61.4 & 6.1 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}💡 Tips
- •Always set pdflang in \hypersetup — screen readers need the document language to select the correct pronunciation.
- •Write alt text that conveys the information the image communicates, not just 'a chart' — describe the data and trends.
- •Mark decorative images as artifacts so screen readers skip them entirely.
- •Test your tagged PDF with PAC (PDF Accessibility Checker) or Adobe Acrobat's accessibility checker to verify compliance.
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