[Athen] Preserving bookmarks in PDFS

[Joshua Hori via athen-list]

Hello Debee,

Try Brave Browser, it’s the only one that I know of that displays PDF tags correctly. It’s also Chromium based, so you can still use the plug-ins from the Google Play store.

It has numerous security enhancements which may be difficult to use at first. Fingerprint blocking, https enforcement, script blocking, and more. There is a button that turns the security off if needed in the address bar. The Reading mode is highly suggested.

Joshua

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Deborah Armstrong via athen-list <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, January 9, 2026 at 7:16 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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