after exporting to PDF - TOC entries each hyperlink, but hyperlinks need alt text to pass PAC3

[Caroline33065934ee8g]

I want to add alt text to TOC hyperlinks in InDesign, before exporting to PDF, so that I don't have to manually add alt text as part of PDF remediation each time I update the TOC and re-publish an updated volume of a series of books.

I constantly need to re-publish a series of books (each file has same Paragraph Styles and same TOC set-up). Each time I re-publish, some entries of the TOC will change, but not all. To reduce manual work remediating (adding alt text to each tag in PDF every time I produce an updated PDF), I'm looking for a solution to have InDesign - by default - make all TOC hyperlinks have alt text - e.g. all TOC hyperlinks' alt text could be set to something generic I type only once and gets applied to all TOC links, like "Table of contents link."

In other words:

• I am looking for a setting or script to set the TOC - in InDesign - to have the hyperlinks that are generated from the TOC when it is exported to PDF - all have alt text, all the same alt text for each TOC entry, and use that same alt text  for any TOC entry, even after updating, so even if there are new or changed TOC entries, the setting will have made it so that all TOC entries always have the generic alt text (e.g. "Table of contents link") applied.

Examples of solution I'm looking for:

• A setting in InDesign that I can use so that the "alt text" for all my TOC Paragraph Styles -- Paragraph Styles I only use in the TOC itself -- will, by default, have a generic text set as alt text
• A script to make the TOC always have every entry get alt text applied -- before exporting to PDF, and even after updating the TOC (where some entries will have been re-ordered/changed/removed)?

Anyone who knows how to set the TOC to - by default - have generic alt text in InDesign (before PDF stage), please let me know! Thanks in advance!

Hoping to find a solution so I won't want to have to remediate this manually in InDeisgn or PDF every time I update the TOC and re-export to PDF.

Feature Request:

In the 'Paragraph Style Options' dialogue box - could InDesign add an option to apply alt text as part of applying that paragraph style? I would use this for the Paragraph Styles I have set to only be used in the TOC - see attached two images.

[Peter Kahrel]

You're out of luck, unfortunately. It's not possible to set any alt-text in a paragraph style in a TOC style. And Adobe forgot to implement the alt-text property in the scripting model, so it's not possible to script alt-text in hyperlinks.

[Caroline33065934ee8g]

Thanks Peter for your reply. Would you know if there is a good place where I can submit this as a request for future updates/releases of InDesign?

[Peter Kahrel]

This is the place to go:

https://indesign.uservoice.com

Maybe first check if the request was posted earlier, and if it was, please support it.

[Caroline33065934ee8g]

Thanks!

[Frans v.d. Geest · Accepted solution]

Open Acrobat Pro, go to Preflight (either under 'Print' or 'PDF Standards' tools), be sure in the menu it says Acrobat 2015 (or later, but not 'Essentials' or something like that), choose the most right icon 'single fixes' (the 'wrench') and search for 'create Contents item for Annotations' run that and save the PDF. Technically annotations or links should have Contents item, not an Alt text (PDF/UA)

[Caroline33065934ee8g]

Thanks Frans! This is helpful. I had seen another page with a similar PDF remediation tip: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/alternative-description-missing-for-annotation-ta...

This works since I only get the "Alternative description missing for annotation" error for TOC entries, and I do not have other hyperlinks in the file.

(If I did have web hyperlinks, I would hope that setting the alt text in InDesign for those would mean that doing this fix, once in PDF, for the TOC hyperlinks, would not interfere with the web hyperlinks' alt text. Maybe these are entirely different, since the TOC fix involves 'content entry' and not alt text, and thus maybe it would not interfere.)

Still, to reduce manual remediation once in PDF, my recommendation/preference would be:

• It would be great if InDesign had a way to automatically tick a box - e.g. when setting up the TOC through the "Table of Contents" menu, or at least prior to exporting to PDF - where you could tell it: 'create content entry' for all hyperlinks generated via the TOC.

[Frans v.d. Geest · Accepted solution]

If you have alt text set yourself for other links, this preflight fix won't change anything in that, so that is safe. . But, for a good understanding: when you enter 'Alt text' in InDesign itself in the field Accessibility in the hyperlinks, InDesign also writes that in the Contents item and nót in the Alt text 😉 Checkers expect it one of those fields, but NVDA and Jaws still not read the Contents item...

[Caroline33065934ee8g]

Thanks so much for the explanation.