Accessibility – Article panel won't tag

As noted in my original post, I had "Export tags for PDF" checked off. @Oriana808

Great. That's step 1 in the above list.

But did you also do step 2?

However I'm still struggling with some text boxes in different docs that will not show up in the tags. Sometimes creating a new text boxes helps (and no, the text boxes were not tagged as artifacts).

In one strange case, ...

What you describe sounds bizare, and without looking at your INDD file, there's no way to determine what's causing the strange behavior. We do a lot of forensics on INDD files at my shop, and most times we find that things like this have two causes (one or both): user error, or some strange coding that got into the file, such as code crud that came in via an imported Word file or a copy/paste.

I'm not sure how to not use the Articles panel. For one thing, it's very handy for long documents as far as organization is concerned.

I'm 3/4 into teaching my Accessible InDesign class, and I haven't yet covered using the Articles Panel. That gives you a clue what I think about that tool!  It has very limited usefulness, other than to organize the tags tree for those who look at the tags tree  -- which is only those of us who either create content (like with InDesign) or who check and remediate PDFs. It has absolutely no purpose for any assistive technology at this time because although the <Art>/articles tag is a valid accessibility tag, it's not recognized by any assistive technology I know.

So if you don't need to organize the tags tree for YOUR benefit, or you don't need it to control the layout and tags, then just ignore the Articles Panel. It has way too many quirks and not enough benefits to justify its use in most documents. Threading your story frames and anchoring graphics and sidebar text boxes is a much more productive (and easier) way to get the correct TAG reading order.

And the architectural / construction reading order is controled by the stacking order in the Layers panel, not the Articles panel.

Also for this particular client, they do not use the Reading Order in the pdf (which I don't blame them because it's a complete nightmare to use in my experience).

First, which reading order? There are 4 reading orders in a PDF: tag RO, TAB RO, architectural/construction RO, and form field RO. See a recent blog post from my shop about the different reading orders and why they're all required for accessibility: https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_08-18_ReadingOrder/reading-orders.shtml

When you say "they do not use the Reading Order," I have to ask: is your client using an assistive technology? RO's are used only by assistive technologies.

If instead they are making PDFs and publishing them to the public, then it's not their choice to use or not use one RO versus another. The reading orders are not there for the publisher: they're used by those with disabilities who use various assistive technologies  to view and use the PDF, and those different assistive technologies will use either the Tag RO, the TAB RO, or the architectural / construction RO to access, view, and interact with the PDF.

We publishers and designers don't get to tell our audience which technology to use to access the PDF. That would probably violate ADA laws.

From time to time, my shop and its corporate partners offer free 1-hour webinars on basic concepts like this. They're great for managers and might be helpful for your client.