Definition
Artifact (PDF)
Content marked for assistive technology to skip: running headers, footers, page numbers, decorative rules. Correct artifact marking is as important as tagging — it keeps furniture out of the reading stream.
Without artifact marking, a screen reader announces the page number and running header in the middle of every page's prose. PDF/UA requires all content to be either tagged (read) or marked artifact (skipped) — nothing ambiguous.
Related tools & guides
Check whether your PDF is accessible
Ceereo audits any born-digital PDF against PDF/UA and WCAG machine checks for free, then writes the missing accessibility layer into the same file. The document looks exactly the same afterwards.