Accessible PDFs Using the ACM Article Template

Generating tagged PDFs with the acmart-tagged document class

LaTeX does not currently generate tagged PDFs by default. Tagged PDFs encode information about the document structure using specialized identifiers for headings, links, etc. that can improve usability for screenreaders and other accessibility technologies. If you’re using an up-to-date version of the acmart template and a recent TeX distribution, you can generate tagged PDFs in a few steps. Here’s how to switch to the acmart-tagged template in Overleaf:

  1. Add the latest version of the acmart template to your Overleaf project: download the latest acmart template zip, unzip it, and upload all files to your Overleaf project.
  2. At the top of your main TeX file, prepend this code before the documentclass command: 
    \DocumentMetadata{
  lang=en,
  pdfversion=2.0,
  pdfstandard=ua-2,
  testphase={phase-III,firstaid,math,title}
}
  3. Rename the document class from acmart to acmart-tagged.
  4. In your project settings, switch the TeX compiler to LuaLaTeX, which is recommended for new documents.
  5. Check the resulting PDF for accessibility using the axes4 tool and PAVE 2.0 beta.

These steps help generate tags for elements such as titles, heading levels, bullet point lists created through standard packages, and other basic text formats. But further manual effort is needed to add alternative text for images, tag header rows in tables, etc. See the LaTeX Project documentation on tagging for more information.