Best Practices for Accessible TOCs in PDFs from InDesign

Question

I have noticed a few things with accessible TOC's made in InDesign:

InDesign correctly tags TOCs as <TOC> when the automatic table of contents feature is used. TOCs are required to be tagged as <TOC> per PDF/UA criteria for accessible documents.
InDesign by default sets the TOC entries to use the zoom setting "fit in window," which is inaccessible because we may not require users to view the document a certain way.
InDesign by default leaves off the alt-tag for each TOC entry, which is inaccessible per the criteria for PDF/UA compliant documents.

Therefore, when building automatic TOCs, we must:

Let InDesign build the TOC automatically.
Add leader dots using a character style with the underline set to use the dot stroke: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-cannot-artifact-leader-dots-accessibility/m-p/14411444#M561130
Manually edit each hyperlinked entry in the TOC to use the zoom setting "inherit zoom"
Manually edit eachhyperlinked entry in the TOC to have an alt-text.

HOWEVER....

Doing these things destroys the bookmarks and the document exports without bookmarks, which is also a failure for PDF/UA criteria.

The only workaround I have found is to create a second automatic TOC that I do not mainipulate in any way, drag it into the pasteboard of the InDesign document, and re-export.

This second TOC generates the bookmarks, and the first TOC that is visible on the page now has the proper zoom settings and link-alt tags. The required <TOC> tag is preserved.

Does anyone have a better and less clumsy solution?

Joel Cherney · Answer

Well, basically, I think you're pointing out really valid problems with the accessibility of PDF docs exported from InDesign. I've seen quite a few documents lately that had auto-generated TOCs off on the pasteboard, with manually constructed TOCs and separate bookmarks in the live document, as if they're working from the same playbook as the one you just posted. It seems to me that better TOC generation in InDesign, if it were going to answer your better-solution question, will most likely require some feature requests. If I'm wrong, I'm sure that we can get some additional expertise in your thread (in the form of persons who have already posted in your accessibility threads, like @Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com or @Willi Adelberger who have already posted in your recent thread about dot leaders in TOCs).

There is one contribution I'm certain that I can make, assuming you can figure out other ways to autogenerate TOCs without manual intervention: you needn't manually apply the dot-leader-underline Character Style. A more automated solution would be to specify a pair of Nested Styles in your TOC text paragraph style - the first applying no character style up to a tab, then a second applying your underline style through one tab. That way, your underline dot leader is applied with no manual handling of the TOC.

But the rest of your TOC challenges don't seem to have obvious answers I can provide. I suspect that the zoom settings in the hyperlinked TOC might be editable in IDML, but that's merely a hunch.

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