Accessability

[JDimaano]

Im working on a tri-fold/brochure, and making it accessible. I'm wondering if there's a way to reorder certain parts to be read out loud in the order I want it to be read because a trifold is read as (5,6,1) / (2,3,4). I'm able to make them read as (1,5,6) / (2,3,4) but not in order of (1,2,3,4,5,6).  

Is there a way to move certain containers in the order list into another page? I tried cutting them but I can't seem to paste it to another page. 

[The Accessible Dezinah]

Background:

The reading oder of an accessible PDF is based on the sequence of the tags in the PDF's tag tree.

In InDesign, the sequence is controlled by how the frames are threaded in InDesign, and secondarily by the sequence of the story threads in the Articles Panel.

Try this technique:

1. Create 6 skinny pages, one for each panel.
2. Meld the pages 5/6/1 together as one spread in the Pages panel, and meld 2/3/4 as the second spread.
3. Thread your story starting on panel 1, then onto panels 2/3/4, and then onto 5/6 of the fist spread.
4. If you have separate story threads, sequence them in the Articles Panel. If you have only one story thread for the entire brochure, you might not need to use the Articles Panel.

[The Accessible Dezinah]

Wait wait, you might have only the PDF file to work with, rather than the source InDesign file.

If that's the case, you can rearrange the tags in the Tags Panel into the correct reading order. Just drag and drop them, or cut and paste them.

So, select the tags that make up panel 1, and drag them to the top of the Tags Tree. Note that you can drag/drop and cut/paste more than one tag at a time. Do the same for the other panels.

[JDimaano]

Yea my bad I left out a lot of information, I only had the pdf.

The brochure was already made and is a spread of 2, that's why I mentioned (x, x, x) (x, x, x) etc. 

I believe the reading order is based on the order section, but I have the Tags in the order I want it to be read. The problem is that I cant move containers(the text) to another page. I was just wondering if there was a way to move it in the order list. 

[The Accessible Dezinah · Accepted solution]

Not really. PDF was never designed to let us make drastic edits to the content like what you're planning.

But per the PDF/UA-1 standard for accessible PDFs, the Tag Tree carries the information needed for AT...that's the tag labels themselves and the tag reading order sequence.

The other order you're talking about is the Architectural/Construction order (the "blue Z-order tool" in Acrobat). Although it's used by many technologies to create another reading order, it is not required for PDF/UA-1 compliance.

Here's a good blog about the different reading orders in PDFs and what they're used for: https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_08-18_ReadingOrder/reading-orders.shtml

If you do want to correct the Architectural/Construction order as well, one way is to use the Crop Tool to crop each individual panel out of the spreads. With a little finesse, you should end up with 6 individuial panels that you can now order in the Thumbnails panel. Your original tags might carry over fairly well, but you can always regenerate them with Acrobat's AutoTag utility in the Accessibility tool panel.

Last option: ask the InDesign user to build the brochure correctly for accessibility. Maybe they need to take a class in how to do this. Good ones are at www.pubcom.com/classes.

[evanc49403243]

Looking at this conversation I have a question about using the read order in Illustrator layers. Some Text are read by the screen reader when the PDF from the Illustrator is placed on my website but not all text. Any thoughts??

Thanks Evan

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Keep in mind that Illustrator has zero controls for accessibility.

It often contains "Zombie Text," which like a Zombie itself, is neither dead nor alive.

By dead, I mean unreadable and acting like a traditional graphic that will need Alt-Text.

By live, I mean readable by text-to-speech assistive technologies like screen readers. However, Zombie Text is not fully live because:

• Often it doesn't recognize all of the text in the graphic.
• Semantics is lost; that is, the text isn't tagged with <P>, <H1>, <L>, etc.  It's just raw untagged text.
• Can't control the reading order of the text.
• It's not compliant with the PDF/UA-1 standard, so some assistive technologies will stumble on the text, others won't. Remember, accessibility is for people with any type of disability, regardless of whatever technology they are using. It's not just for those who use screen readers.

So that's why I call it Zombie Text.

Every good designer should avoid Zombie Text by doing any of these suggestions:

1. With graphics that have significant text in them (like infographics), build the graphic in a page layout program like Adobe InDesign where you can control all the accessibility for it:
   • Tags
   • Tag Reading Order.
   • Architectural/Construction Reading Order.
   • Alt-Text.
2. If using Illustrator, flatten the graphic before exporting/saving into its final file format.
3. The AI file format tends to leave all of the graphics elements "live" when the AI is placed into InDesign. So export/save as from Illustrator in some other file format, such as PDF, EPS, or PNG. All are sufficient to use for digital publishing.
4. When the final destination is HTML/web, then the JPG file format will kill the text and convert it to graphical text, but you will loose some clarity of the text. The PNG format should keep the text clear and crisp, but you might end up with Zombie Text.