Figure tags not appearing consistently in PAC3 screen reader preview

[David Delany]

Hello all,

I've been struggling for weeks to try and resolve this myself using the available resources here and elsewhere online, but I must reach out to community to assist me here as I am out of ideas.

Our company has created an end of year report in InDesign which is 40 pages long. The client is a government agency and so they have to meet the highest levels of accessibility, in this case we have been using the PAC3 Accessibility Checker tool. We have finally eliminated all red crosses and yellow warning signs, and the document meets all the necessary standards to pass certification. However there still remain some style issues which I would like to resolve.

It is the first time we have been required to do any accessibility work and so there has been a lot of learning on the job, so bear with me if I am using the wrong terminology here. We followed all the steps we felt we could in InDesign 16.4, using paragraph and character styles, setting tags and alt text via the Object Export Options dialogue box, and marking artefacts where necessary. We then exported as a tagged PDF, with the remainder of the tagging, reading order and metadata being done in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

The two issues that stand out ot me still are span tags appearing throughout the document, and the figure tags not displaying as expected in the screen reader preview. It is the second issue that I would like to address in particular. I have attached two screenshots here from the PAC3 screen reader preview. The first is how all but one of the figures appear, they don't seem to be in any container however they are indeed correctly tagged as a figure in Acrobat. The second is how I would expect the figures to appear, however, when comparign the two tags, I cannot find any difference between them.

Does anyone know why this could be? I am happy to provide any additional information you need.

Thank you in advance.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

PAC3 is just one company's version of checking a PDF for compliance for accessibility. It's not the "bible" of anything. There are things that are correct, other items it flags are not errors at all. You must understand accessibility in order to understand PAC3's reports.

So don't rely on it or any other company's checker. Checking the file by humans is still the best method, especially when combined with the automated checking tools.

RE: the graphics, did you first check the PDF with Acrobat's built-in accessibility checker? It should flag any figures that have problems.

And did you test the file in a screen reader?

I've been struggling for weeks to try and resolve this myself using the available resources here and elsewhere online, but I must reach out to community to assist me here as I am out of ideas.

By @David Delany

Take a class. There are too many items to learn about accessible InDesign-to-PDF to learn on your own. And make sure the instructor is qualified to teach accessibility. Some good options:

• Chad Chelius' video class at LinkedIn Learning. Hint: sign up for a free 1-month trial.
• My live online classes at www.PubCom.com
• My books at www.PubCom.com/books
• The annual InDesign Accessibility Summit hosted by InDesign Secrets/CreativePro. It's a live online conference with video recordings.

...with the remainder of the tagging, reading order and metadata being done in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

All of these tasks should be done in your InDesign layout, do not wait and do them in Acrobat because 1) it's much slower to do them in Acrobat, and 2) you have to do the tasks every time you export a PDF.

When you do them in the source InDesign layout, they're complete with every PDF your export.

The two issues that stand out ot me still are span tags appearing throughout the document...

<Span> tags are required for certain items, such as a change in language of a few letters or words, hyphenation, surrounding hyperlink information, etc.

But if you're seeing them too often and on large amounts of text, such as entire paragraphs, it's because that text was manually formatted or had manual overrides applied. Check your InDesign layout by turning on the Highlighter tool in the Paragraph Styles panel. It highlights these overrides in bright blue-green. When found, correct what you manually formatted by building a paragraph or character style for that formatting.

—Bevi