Creating Arabic Accessible PDF

[chelseap44387625]

I have a 24 page document that I created in InDesign CC 2019. The language is Arabic, however there is English text mixed in. I've mapped my styles to the desired tags, used the Articles panel for reading order as well as the Layers panel. In Acrobat Pro I've set my reading voice to one of the Arabic voices. My testers and I are having a couple issues that I cannot seem to figure out and haven't found anything online. Please help!

1. Some periods are being read as "dot" instead of being ignored. Solved. It helps if your testers are using the correct Voice. 
2. Phone numbers are being read right to left, rather than left to right, for example instead of 1-800-555-5555 it is being read as 5555-555-800-1. Fixed - Tag each phone number alone. Go to tag settings and change content language to English.
3.  This may not be related to the language, but: So many paragraphs are not being tagged when I export to PDF. Other paragraphs with the same style are fine. What gives?

A couple screen shots if they're helpful:

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

ChelseaP wrote:

Some periods are being read as "dot" instead of being ignored. 

If there is a spacebar before the period, it will be voiced as "dot."

If there are 2 or more periods in a row, they will be voiced as "dot dot."

ChelseaP wrote:

Phone numbers are being read right to left, rather than left to right, for example instead of 1-800-555-5555 it is being read as 5555-555-800-1

Haven't see that one before! Give this a try:

• Make a character style, and set the language to English:USA (or any other Left-to-Right language).
• Apply it to the phone numbers.
• Let us know in this forum if it worked on not!

Character style to force a left-to-right reading language.

ChelseaP wrote:

This may not be related to the language, but: So many paragraphs are not being tagged when I export to PDF. Other paragraphs with the same style are fine. What gives?

No, it's not due to language. Here are some things that can cause this:

• Anything on a master page is automatically artifacted (and won't appear in the tag tree).
• Once you start using the Articles panel, everything you want tagged must be added to the Articles panel. It's an all or nothing tool. If any text or graphic frame (or series of threaded frames, aka a "threaded story") is left out, it won't be tagged.
  • Check each of the items that's not tagged to ensure it's in the Articles panel. If not, drag it in there.
• Check the Object Export Options for the items that are untagged. Ensure they are not set to Artifact in the middle Tagged PDF tab:

Ensure frame is NOT set to Artifact.

[chelseap44387625]

Thanks for your help!

Regarding the periods; None have a space before, and there are no periods repeated two in a row.

Regarding Phone numbers; I tried doing a character style, and setting them all in English. That did not work. However, what DID work was in Acrobat, creating a separate <P> tag for each phone number, and changing the laguage for the tag to English. So that problem is solved, yay. 

Regarding some text not being tagged; I have the text set in a two clumn text frame. Some of the text withithn the same frame is being tagged and some is not, so it's not an issue with the frame being set to export as an Artifact. Not a huge deal as I can just use the Reading Order Panel in Acrobat, but annoying nonetheless. 

[chelseap44387625]

I'm wondering if it has something to do with the way it's tagged initially:

As you can see, the periods are tagged separately, as are words. What I've been doing is selecting everything in the Reading Order Panel and tagged everything all together as <P> so that it's cleaner.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Although I'm not here to give a solution, however I've worked at one stage on accessibility for Arabic PDFs. Here is a post on the "Adobe Feature request / Bug report" which may be either useful to you, or at least to report the issue you're facing directly to Acrobat development team. 

[chelseap44387625 · Accepted solution]

Okay, I think I know what's going on with the periods being read as "dot". Turns out my testers weren't using an Arabic voice. They were using the English voice. (┛ಠ_ಠ)┛彡┻━┻