I am having issues with 508 Compliance for PDFs created from InDesign in Burmese language.

Report · Jun 02, 2023

Hi,

I do a lot of work with health industry and a requirement is getting documents remediated for 508 compliance. I'm having lots of issues with files translated to Burmese. I've tried different fonts for unicode compatibility, making sure the InDesign document is set for Burmese and the Adobe world-ready paragraph composer is set. The files match what I get from my translators, but continually get character encoding issues when I do an accessibilty check or we send for 508 remediation. One suggestion was to set the PDF language to the correct language, but Burmese is not an option. I could use any other suggestions, help or solutions.

Report · Jun 03, 2023

Hi @Dianne at Allegra,

Trying to help diagnose what's happening to your fonts in the PDF. Some questions...

What software checker is giving the language error? The one built into Acrobat, or a third-party checker? Need its name and release/build number.
Does it identify specific text or font that's failing?
When you exported the PDF from InDesign, did you ensure that the fonts were embedded? That's required for accessible PDFs. You must export to PDF (Interactive) to have the fonts automatically embedded into the pdf.
The PDF you supplied is not tagged. Can you give us a copy of a tagged version, as it comes out of InDesign without any extra changes done in Acrobat? This will help us diagnose what's happening.
Your PDF's File/Properties.
In InDesign, did you set your paragraph style to use Burmese/Myamar?
In each Paragraph Style used to format Burmese, set the style's language to Burmese.
InDesign: Set the language for each paragraph style.
I noticed you have English words within the paragraphs. For those, create a Character Style and set it to English.
InDesign: Character style for selected words in Englilsh.
After the PDF is generated, set the PDF's primary language in Acrobat Pro. Since Burmese is not one of the preset languages, you'll have to type in the ISO 639 language code for Burmese/Myanmar — "my". See the ISO code list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes and also at https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Set the PDF's primary language to Burmese. Type in "my"

These steps should correctly set the languages in the PDF.

Let us know if this works.

Report · Jun 16, 2023

Hi Bevi,

Thank you for replying! I'll dig in a bit more and see if any of your suggestions work. I have not been exporting interactive so will definitely try that. Attached is a screen capture from the remediation vendor. I get issues when doing the accessibily checker in Acrobat. I will give it another shot with your helpful suggestions.

Report · Jun 16, 2023

Hi Dianne,

The screen capture shows another problem: discontiguous paragraphs of text are selected (highlighted in magenta). That's signaling that there are more problems than just the language. Maybe corrupted/damaged text content or mis-tagged content. And that can affect the text encoding.

What was your source program that originally created the PDF? InDesign?

If so, which version and platform? Need the long build number with dots, not "2023" or "18".

Report · Jun 16, 2023

Bevi,

Yes file is created in InDesign - originally done in English and a translation is contracted and sent to us. I have tried it in both InDesign 17.4 and 18.2.1. I'm on Windows 10 64bit machine.

I think one problem is that I don't originate these files, we are provided the English files and sometimes the Burmese file in InDesign and often I get the Burmese translations provided in a word doc and I then replace the text with the provided translation and changing the document language and paragraph settings to Burmese (myanmar). This particular project I've tried both the translators InDesign file and using a word doc and replacing the text in the english InDesign file. Both without luck. I have not tried the interactive PDF export and will give that a go next along with your other suggestions Monday. We have a 12 pg newsletter currently in play that will need remediation, so I need to figure this out!

Thank you so much for your input and assistance.

Report · Jun 16, 2023

This must be so frustrating to work on!

I suspect that there's some corruption going on someplace: either the Word file isn't correctly created or uses an outdated non-Unicode Myanmar font, or your InDesign has become corrupted or maybe the font in InDesign, too.

Would you be willing to do a couple of quick test files when you get a chance (Monday or whenever) with just the text? Since the problem is with the font, I want to isolate for just the text.

1. Do you know what exact font the translators are using in their Word files? Font manufacturer, font name, version, etc. See if you can track it down and drag it into your computer's C://Windows/Fonts folder.

2. Reboot your computer.

Word:

3. Open their Word.docx file on your computer's Word. Does the text look ok? No missing characters, odd spacing, etc.?

4. Using Adobe PDF Maker, export an accessible PDF. For instructions, see this tutorial on our website. Use Method A and/or C to do a full test. See instructions at https://www.pubcom.com/blog/tutorials/index.shtml This step will show whether the font is on your computer, and whether their use of the font is correct. It also will let us know if the Adobe conversion utility (PDF Maker) is accurately recognizing the font and processing it into the PDF. And method C will test Microsoft's conversion utility, too.

InDesign:

5. If that was successful, then place the same Word.docx file into a brand new blank INDD layout. Don't worry about columns/margins because this is just to receive the text, convert it, and export a new PDF. It's not the final design. Do not strip out the formatting and let the file come in as it was created in Word (this retains their fonts). And let it be just <P> tags for now. Did it work? Are the fonts OK at this point?

6. Export an Interactive PDF from InDesign. Yes, Interactive! You might not be getting the right settings if you use the Print version, especially regarding fonts. A quick tutorial on how to do this is at https://www.pubcom.com/blog/tutorials/indesign/export-pdf/index.shtml

And let me know the results of the final PDF. If you think it would help, you can attach any of these files to this thread and I'll take a look at them.

Crossing my fingers for you...

Report · Jun 21, 2023

Hi Bevi,

I'm sharing the translated word document and PDF that I am supplied from the translator. I then copy and paste the text into the InDesign document so we can maintain crops/bleeds etc. Also answering as best I can your questions.

1. The font they use is Myanmar Text - I also use that same font in InDesign.

2. I've rebooted and done many other things - I'm currently on a different computer because of network issues on the one I previously worked on - I'll see if this makes any difference!

3. The word doc looks fine in word and everything appears to match once I paste into InD.

4-6 I am trying the export as accessible PDF instructions now and will keep you posted!

I truly appreciate your assistance!!

Report · Jun 21, 2023

Hi again Bevi,

I've tried only the text (actually the title and first paragraph) in a new InDesign file and exported and I'm still getting character encoding errors. I tried changing fonts (from Myanmar Text to Myanmar MN) and still getting character encoding errors. I'm not sure how to tell if the fonts are truly unicode or not. Althought I've sent previous files with the Myanmar Text font and they have been remediated. I get nothing in preflight telling me there are problems.

Report · Jun 21, 2023

Here are my test files. Even tried downloading a new font (Padauk). I'm stumped

Report · Jul 04, 2023

Hi Dianne @Dianne at Allegra,

I believe it might be your version of the font. It might not be fully Unicode compliant.

A bad font used by the translators in the Word file will corrupt your output, as well as a bad font in your layout, too.

The translator's Word.docx file you sent earlier uses Myanmar Text font which is installed with Windows 10 and 11. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/myanmar-text

If possible, try to use the same font family so that things don't shift when the Word file is imported into InDesign. The font file names are mmrtext.ttf (regular) and mmrtextb.ttf (bold).

See if you can locate these 2 fonts in your C:/Windows/Fonts folder. If you can't locate the files, then download and install opensource versions from https://github.com/AungMyoKyaw/Myanmar-Unicode-Fonts/find/master Scroll down to Myanmar Text, select it, and click the download button on the right. Ditto with the bold version.

Install them traditionally on your computer: that is, unzip the files and drag them into the C:/Windows/Fonts directory. Do a cold reboot of your computer (shut down and then restart).
Open a new InDesign layout and create some styles with the new Myanmar Text fonts. Body Text, Headings, etc and set the language to Myanmar. Also make a Character Style for the text like MD Wise (a condensed sans serif) and set its language to English.
Then import/place the Word.docx file into the layout. (Do not copy/paste.) Click the box to show Import Options so that you can control how the Word.docx comes into InDesign. Frankly, the sample docx file you posted is not formatted correctly and nearly everything is manually formated with overrides rather than with Paragraph and Character styles. This is a mess to import correctly into an INDD layout and maintain the fonts and language. It alone will cause encoding errors in the final PDF.
In the layout, make sure to use only Paragraph and Character styles to format the text, and make sure they have the appropriate language setting (see above) and use the Myanmar Text font, too.
Export to PDF and let's see what you get.

Accessibility requires precise attention to details, and when dealing with multiple languages, it's even more critical to do so.

That means your translators must know how to make an accessible Word document in the foreign language — no manual formatting (called overrides), strict use of paragraph and character styles to format the text.

It also means you must know how to import the text into your layout, retain the fonts, and format the layout with paragraph and character styles. No manual formatting.

And then, of course, how to export an accessible interactive PDF.

Hope this gets you on a better path!

Report · Jul 12, 2024

Update to my previous post on June 3, 2023...using language codes.

If your language isn't available in the InDesign or Acrobat drop-down lists, then type a 639-2 language code into the field box, not 639-1 codes.

A list is available from the US Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

Note the different codes when text is "B" Bibliographic or "T" Technical. (See the intro paragraph at the top of the chart.)

—Bevi