Is there a way to add "alt text" to links in PDFs in Adobe Acrobat?

Question

In Adobe Acrobat Pro, it's not that difficult to add links to a page, but I'm wondering if there's also a way to add "alt text" (sometimes called "title text") to links as well. In HTML, this would be done as such:

<a href="url" title="Text goes here">link</a>

Then when the mouse is hovering over the link, the text appears as a little tooltip. Is there an equivalent for PDFs? And if so, how do you add it?

Answer 1

No, it's not possible to add alt text to a link in a PDF. There's no provision for this in the PDF reference.

On a related note, links in PDFs and links in HTML documents are handled quite differently. A link in a PDF is actually a type of annotation, which sits on top of the page at specified co-ordinates, and has no technical relationship to the text or image in the document. Where as links in HTML documents bare a direct relationpship to the elements which they hyperlink.

Answer 2

Alt text, or alternate text, is not the same as title text. Title text is meta data intended for human consumption. Alt text is alternate text content upon media in case the media fails to load.

Answer 3

Actually PDF does support alternate text. It's part of Logical Structure documented PDF Reference 1.7 section 10.8.2 "Alternate Descriptions"

/Span << /Lang (en-us) /Alt (six-point star) >> BDC (✡) Tj EMC

Answer 4

There is also a trick using an invisible form button that doesn't do anything but allows a small popup tooltip text to be added when the mouse hovers over it.