Artifact

In PDF accessibility, an artifact is content that is marked as decorative or non-essential and should be ignored by assistive technologies. Examples include page numbers, headers/footers, decorative images, background graphics, and watermarks. Properly marking artifacts prevents screen readers from announcing repetitive or meaningless content, improving the experience for users who rely on assistive technology. Content creators must distinguish between truly decorative elements (which should be artifacts) and meaningful content (which requires proper tagging). The Matterhorn Protocol includes specific checkpoints related to proper artifact marking in accessible PDF documents.