[Athen] Preserving bookmarks in PDFS

[Karen McCall via athen-list]

As far as I know, Bookmarks are still "optional" in terms of whether they get added to a document or not. They were in ISO 32000-1:2008 (PDF).

I just looked at ISO 23000-2:2020 and Bookmarks are only referenced in terms of being the outline of the document. It is the same with ISO 14289-2:2024 - Bookmarks are only referenced a couple of times and only to state that the outline is often referred to as Bookmarks.

This may explain why JAWS 2026 keeps identifying my Headings as Bookmarks which is annoying!!!!!! I can't find a way to turn this off.

For both PDF standards, it is up to the PDF Viewer/Editor developers to "interpret" and "implement" the standards.

Good luck to us all!

Cheers, Karen


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Deborah Armstrong via athen-list
Sent: Friday, January 9, 2026 10:15 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Preserving bookmarks in PDFS

The input is an OER textbook which is a fairly accessible PDF. It has headings, and seems well tagged/marked up.
But the student wants to use a browser which makes book navigation much easier than adobe reader.
However the bookmarks in the PDF don't translate. If you open the PDF in a browser, there are no headings. If you open it in a conversion program, the bookmarks are known but converting to HTML looses them.
I've seen this with a couple of OER textbooks when they are requested by a screen reader user. And as a screen reader user myself, I've confirmed the behavior.
Students with other print impairments don't seem to have trouble with the files. K3000 and Adobe Reader of course see the bookmarks. K1000 does as well, but most students don't have that at home, and when K1000 converts to HTML, it also looses the bookmarks.
It's too bad that K1000 cannot be used by a student at home with a license that lasts for the quarter or semester.
What I really want to do is simply convert the PDF to html and have all that markup preserved.
Any thoughts?
--Debee

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