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davidt84183086
Participant
April 17, 2026
Answered

How-to Accessible PDFs using UXP

  • April 17, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 72 views

We are developing a UXP plug-in for Adobe InDesign 2026  that will be FREE to automate the generation of accessible PDFs (for people with low vision) directly from InDesign.

 

We have conducted a series of tests, and some concepts do not work as indicated in the Adobe documentation.

 

1) According to Adobe’s official documentation (https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-accessible-pdfs.html) and various YouTube tutorials, reading order is achieved by placing elements into Articles, and the order of these elements defines the first level. The second level consists of anchored objects and text tagged with export tags, not XML. We export as an interactive PDF with the “Create Tagged PDF” option enabled. We have verified using the PAC tool (2026) (PDF/UA Foundation, an internationally recognized organization based on the WCAG accessibility standard) that the order of elements within the article is not reflected in PAC (via the "Screen reader preview" button). The result is the same whether “Use structure for tab order” is enabled or not: the entire document is exported without taking Articles or the internal order of their elements into account.

 

2)  We have verified that if we correctly build the XML structure—with properly ordered elements, including marking as Artifact what should not be read, and with anchored images—PAC displays it correctly

 

So all accessibility features are generated from the XML structure?

Thanks in advance

    Correct answer Mike Witherell

    Hi David,

    Did you go deeper into the Articles panel menu button and choose to turn on “Use for Tagging Order in Tagged PDF?”

    2 replies

    Frans v.d. Geest
    Community Expert
    Frans v.d. GeestCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 17, 2026

    So… keep the difference in mind between TAG order (through Articles, see also what Mike Witherell said) and the READING order (set by the LAYERS panel). Which order are you trying to create? Have you also checked the DOCUMENT order? Both TAG and READING order (LAYER) should be identical but that is up to the designer, not even MadeToTag can make them automatically the same.

      Mike Witherell
      Community Expert
      Mike WitherellCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      April 17, 2026

      Hi David,

      Did you go deeper into the Articles panel menu button and choose to turn on “Use for Tagging Order in Tagged PDF?”

      Mike Witherell
        D
        davidt84183086Author
        Participant
        April 22, 2026

        Thank you very much!

        After carefully reviewing all the advice we received, including the valuable help from the NVDA developers, we followed all the recommendations and successfully solved the issues.

        1. When reusing an InDesign document originally created in a very old version of Adobe InDesign, especially if it was created with the interface set to a different language (Spanish in our case), and it is now being edited in another language (English), NVDA may generate the audio error message: “Spanish not supported.”
        This can also happen in other workflows that rely on InDesign metadata, such as exporting tables to XML.
        This issue is not solved by simply changing the default language in the usual way:
        Window > Type & Tables > Character
        (With nothing selected, open the Character panel menu and choose the default language.)

        2. What did need to be enabled was the option in the Articles panel:
        “Use for Tagging Order in Tagged PDF”

        3. For linked images, in the export options we set:
        Alt Text: Custom (with the desired text)
        Tagged PDF: Leave all fields as From Structure

        4. In the Structure panel, the images had previously been tagged as Image, although they are now anchored objects.

        5. We also reordered the content both in the XML Structure and in the Articles panel.

        We are now continuing with the development of the free plug-in for Adobe InDesign.
        We will let you know when it is available so you can test it.
        Best regards.

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