*** From the Archives ***
This article is from August 25, 2006, and is no longer current.
Creating Accessible PDF Documents
Adobe PDF files have become the closest thing we have to a universal format, platform-independent, and not requiring the original application or fonts that created the file. However, to be truly universal, PDF needs to be accessible. Accessible means that the PDF documents must be usable by people with disabilities, as well as people who read PDF documents on handheld devices. In fact, the US government mandates accessibility for some documents, such as with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act.
InDesign is one of the best applications to create accessible PDFs, but how to do so is not easy to discover. You can’t create a good accessible document with InDesign alone, but in combination with Adobe Acrobat Professional. Fortunately, there is now a PDF manual available which explains how, Creating Accessible PDFs Using Acrobat 7.0 Professional. Written by Greg Pisocky of Adobe Systems, it details the steps to go through in InDesign and Acrobat to successfully produce an accessible PDF document. (It also covers using other applications which can create tagged files, including Adobe Framemaker, Microsoft Word for Windows, and others.) Weighing in at 141 pages, the manual is quite thorough, and is completely indexed and bookmarked.
In InDesign CS2, you can view the structure of a document (View > Structure > Show Structure), and add tags to an untagged document with the Tags palette. There are other ways to incorporate tags into InDesign CS2 documents. If you’ve styled your document using paragraph and character styles, you can map those styles to XML tags, and let InDesign apply the tags to the styled content. You can map more than one style to the same tag, and edit the mappings at any time.
If you want screen readers to describe graphical elements that illustrate important concepts in the document, you must provide the description. Figures and multimedia aren’t recognized or read by a screen reader unless you add alternate text to the tag properties. With Adobe InDesign, it’s necessary to add the Alt attribute to the Figure tag. Right click on the desired Figure tag and select Add New Attribute. In the New Attribute dialog box, enter the alternate text.
To save tagged text out of InDesign, you must use InDesign’s Export PDF command (creating a PostScript file and Distilling strips out tagging!) You also need to turn on the Create Tagged PDF option in Export Adobe PDF dialog box.
Tagging text in PDF files has other uses as well: It makes them easier to edit with Acrobat’s TouchUp Text tool because Acrobat recognizes their structure. And if you need to export formatted text from a PDF, you’ll have a much easier time if they contain structure. For example, all the paragraph endings will be retained.
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I’m about to read the PDF, but my first experiences with creating an accessible PDF have been pretty poor. The online manual for InDesign CS2 and Acrobat 7 don’t quite match. I tagged several objects that I did not want to be read by a screen reader with the “Artifact” tag. But Acrobat ignores this and wants me to re-tag them as “Background”. They need to make this a smoother procedure.
I was having a look at that document from Adobe, and it’s need of a revision. On page 21 it says “for more information on preparing InDesign CS files for accessibility see ‘About using Acrobat structure tags for PDF export’ in InDesign CS Help”. This doesn’t exist in either the online help or the PDF version of the documentation. Perhaps they are referring to “Adding structure to Adobe PDF files” entry in the online help or p574 in the documentation.
The PDF’s are pretty accessible but, how do you go about converting the tables to the accessible format…easily! We have documents that are hundreds of pages and we need to be able to convert the tables to read with the headers along the left margin of each related line.
“InDesign doesn?t import movies, sound, links, or buttons when you place a PDF file…..”
The above paragraph been taken from the indesign manuel. This is A big problem for me, because I need to place in Indesign document a pdf file that contain some hyperLinks, then I want to export this document to final pdf that contain the hyperlinks originally were in the pdf file i just placed.
Any idea how to solve this problem? TIA
The only good solution to the hyperlinks-in-pdf problem is to insert that PDF into the final PDF using Acrobat instead of InDesign. Acrobat 9 has some really good tools for inserting PDFs into other PDFs. I’m surprised that Adobe hasn’t fixed this in InDesign yet. Definitely frustrating.
Hi David
Thank You for this useful information. How can I take this issue further, and make Adobe fix this?
Acrobat ignores the reading order defined in Indesign.
You will always get the order in which you placed the elements on the page originally. You can rearrange the structure in Indesign so that it makes sense, but Acrobat will not take it… Has anybody found a solution?
For more information on accessibility issues, including reading order, read the white paper listed on this blog post.
Hi David,
thank you for your reply. The white paper does tell you to set the page properties to “use document structure”. And clicking this check box should do the job. Only it doesn’t.
Hi Sigrun and David,
I’m having the same issue and have also read that whitepaper carefully – glad to hear it’s not just me!
Very frustrating though and makes me question the need to change the order of tags in the Structure pane when you have to reOrder in Acrobat anyway.
it’s also confusing because read out loud works fine, as does exporting accessible text, but the reading order panel and the content panel give the wrong order.
There is no doubt in my mind that there are many bugs in the pdf export. However, if the read out loud and exporting text works from acrobat, then what’s the problem? Perhaps it’s a bug in Acrobat?
That’s what i’m wondering too, but i watched a recent webinar on this issue and Charlie Pike the presenter said at one point that the touch up order is the order in which assistive technologies will read content so this concerns me.. the seminar mentioned that tags panel and reading order aren’t always the same.
Like you say this may be an acrobat bug but is a concern..
Strange: when exporting text or html code, Acrobat takes the structure as laid out in Indesign, but the reflow order is consistent with Acrobat’s reading order…
I just read your article, that makes it sound easy. However it’s not cut and dried, and I have yet to create one single PDF from InDesign CS3 and Acrobat Pro 8. I follow all the steps listed in InDesign Help and then export the tagged Acrobat PDF- and everything looks exactly like it should in InDesign, but when I open it up in Acrobat Pro, ALLl the tags are mixed up. I then fix the PDF in Acrobat Pro, save the PDF and when the screen reader opens it, ALL the tags are mixed up, the words have random uppercase/lowercase sprinkled throughout the words – in short the document is a mess and definitely not accessible. Are there any solutions out there?
I’m having similar issues, everything is great in InDesign but when I export my document to PDF it is a mess. Acrobat doesn’t hold the reading order I set in InDesign and in some cases it assigns random tags, even if I’ve set them in InDesign. When I try to reorder in Acrobat, it combines all the text areas so that the screen reader doesn’t break (reads the title then right into body text, no break). Also, in some cases, it moves the text behind the background so it’s no longer visible. There’s got to be a solution to this! Was this technology launched before it was ready? Seems like a lot of glitches with no solutions.
I’m wondering if watching Michael Murphy’s 40-minute recorded webinar on this topic would help you out?
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/accessibility-adobe/preparing-indesign-files-for-accessibility/
I’ve got a client who is insistant on making their PDFs accesible. They don’t know why they want it, as they’ve got no idea how to check, but they want it anyway.
I’ve been experimenting with tagging Indesign CS5 documents and exporting and trying to read them in Acrobat and you know what? The process is STILL a load of crap.
Why dear god why would you want to do this in Acrobat if they just made this possible in Indesign. The software where you actually design and edit your text.
Perhaps it got better in CS5.5, I certainly hope so.
@Adam: YES, the Accessibility features are one of the main improvements in 5.5. I strongly urge anyone who needs to create accessible pdf documents to get 5.5 as soon as possible.
Like many of you, I was pulling my hair out struggling to get Acrobat to respect the reading order I assigned in InDesign’s Articles palette. Looks like Reading Order in Acrobat is actually based on the reverse order of how objects are stacked in the InDesign Layers palette. Objects placed at the bottom of the stack are read first. You can imagine this will raise hell with your design, so you’ll have to use a combination of excluding articles from being exported and layering your text and images in the opposite order you want them read.
If it weren’t so frustrating, it would be laughable.
Is there a way to add alt-text to links, not objects or figures but hyperlinks and TOCs, in Indesign CC? So added alt-text to text essentially. This is required for PAC 2.0 or 2015 standards for WAG. Right now it is done in acrobat and is very time consuming. Any ideas?
Thanks
Unfortunately, InDesign doesn’t provide that level of control. It’s one of the things we’ve been asking the InDesign team for. My only solution is the one that you’re already using. To do it in Acrobat.
thank you for your quick response. Hopefully Indesign will add this feature. Funnily enough it is something you can do in word. ; )
Hi can anyone point me to some up to date resources for creating accessible pdf documents using xml tagging (the link in this article no longer works and searching through Adobe help sends me round in circles!)
Thanks!
I’m looking for someone to create an ADA Compliant PDF from my InDesign CC file. It’s a 10 page newsletter. Any chance you can direct me to someone that can do that? Much appreciated.