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Colleen Gratzer
Colleen Gratzer
Participant
August 23, 2023
Question

Reading order of RTL languages not respected in Acrobat?

  • August 23, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 769 views
I've noticed when creating an accessible PDF from InDesign in a RTL language that, in Acrobat, the architectural reading order reads left to right. In the tags tree, containers within tags also do the same.
 
Everything is set in InDesign as RTL with the World Ready Composer. The PDF is designated as Arabic.
 
I am curious if this is just how Acrobat shows it since I am using an English version (LTR obviously), and that's all it is.
This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Zaid Al Hilali
Community Expert
Zaid Al HilaliCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 24, 2023

The fault is from Acrobat. The program (Acrobat) lacks full Arabic support in many areas including Accessibility. If the document or the Arabic part of the document isn't long eg. tens of pages, I'd then recommend that you manually tag sentences where needed, but even then, reading out Arabic text on assistive devices may not work well too, testing is necessary.

 

Colleen Gratzer
Colleen GratzerAuthor
Participant
August 24, 2023

Tagging, layer order and RTL were all done in InDesign.

Zaid Al Hilali
Community Expert
Zaid Al HilaliCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 25, 2023

I did a few simple tests yesterday in order to come back to you with good suggestions. Unfortunately, none were satisfactory, The best I could get was to open the PDF in Acrobat Pro, and run the "Autotag Document" option found in the Accessibility panel, and only then did the reading order appear logical enough.

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