InDesign articles no longer determine reading order?

[Brittanie5E15]

Hi all!

I've recently noticed that in creating an accessible pdf, the Articles panel is giving me a little trouble. It seems that the order of objects on the Articles panel is not determining the Reading Order in PDF. All of the required checkboxes are checked, including one that used to say "Use for Reading Order in Tagged PDF" but now says "Use for Tab Order in Tagged PDF." Does the Articles tab no longer control the reading order in PDF? Is this a bug or just a feature that is no longer supported? 

[hammer0909 · Accepted solution]

The Articles panel never did control the Reading Order in a PDF file. It controls the tag order. The Reading order can be controlled in InDesign by adjusting the stacking order of objects in the Layers panel from bottom to top.

[Brittanie5E15]

Thank you, Chad! 

[Greg Parks]

Wait, what? That's the opposite of what this Adobe help article states:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-accessible-pdfs.html

Establish a reading order with the Articles panel
InDesign’s Articles panel allows you to establish a document’s content reading order for Acrobat entirely within InDesign without using the XML structure pane. Acrobat understands this order and will follow it in the exported PDF once you instruct it to do so in Acrobat.

...

Organize your content in the Articles panel by dragging an item within an article up or down until all items are in the desired order. The reading order is from top to bottom. Reordering in the Articles panel does not affect the position or appearance of items on the InDesign page.

[hammer0909]

Yeah the article is misleading. The term Reading Order is often used interchangeably to refer to the tag order. I don't like this because in Acrobat there actually is a Read Order that is different from the Tag order. The truth is that the Articles panel controls the Tag order in the exported PDF and doesn't affect the Read Order in the exported PDF. I hope that helps.

[scranfill]

So what is the purpose of controlling the tag order if it doesn't affect the reading order?

[hammer0909 · Accepted solution]

This has been discussed numerous times including on our Chax Chat podcast at chaxchat.com. A PDF file has two orders to contend with, tag order and reading order. JAWS and NVDA uses tag order other assistive technologies use reading order. That's why we need to set both.

[Abby35489456clg6]

Hey Chad, I'm combing through a bunch of discussion boards here about creating accessible ID files, specifically the use of the Articles panel, and I see a number of responses from you. I've seen some repeated advice that the Articles panel is not necessary to creating a fully accessible doc. Can you clarify--if I have set up export tags for my paragraph styles, and mapped styles to tags, is there any reason to use the articles panel? Text boxes are connected with threads, and it sounds like that will determine the reading order? Thanks in advance. 

[hammer0909]

If all of your content is threaded, then sure your tag order will be defined naturally based on the flow of the text. But if you are not threading all of your text, the only way to implicitly define the tag order is using the Articles panel.

[Abby35489456clg6]

Gotcha, thank you. Just watched your Tech Access OK video on YT, super helpful! I've read that we need to reorder the objects in the Layers panel as well? Is that part of your recommended workflow? Makes it super confusing that Articles panel reads the order top > bottom and Layers panel reads it bottom > top 😛 

[hammer0909]

Yep I know it's confusing and frustrating but remember I didn't create this process 😉 And yes, if you want to maximize access to your document to ensure that all users can consume the content, you should set the tag order and the reading order.