Indesign javascript to add the Hyperlink alternate text for accessibility

Hi ,

you could also support my bug report from 2019 in the bug section of InDesign UserVoice:

[15.0.0.155] New property Alternate Text for Hyperlinks is not supported by Scripting, IDMS and IDML
Uwe Laubender, Nov 21, 2019
https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/913162-adobe-indesign-sdk-scripting-bugs-and-features/suggestions/39091648--15-0-0-155-new-property-alternate-text-for-hyper

Regards,

Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

It's worse. The Alt Text gets lost if you export to IDML. Vote for fixing this:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/42235630-hyperlink-accessibility

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

I have a feeling that this particular use might be a controversial use of ALT text (though it's often required when the link is on an image). If you consider ALT text from the point of view of accessibility (rather than SEO or presentation), then what you've done is provided the user who needs accessibility (because they can't read the words on screen) with a simplified view of things - if the original text best said "www.google.com" then the user who needs accessibility is given a different, simplified, view - which also doesn't make grammatical sense. On the other hand, if the person who doesn't need accessibiltiy would benefit from this info, then they should be offered it. Also for accessibiltity, the person listening to a screen reader doesn't want to sit through things like "this is a picture of a leopard", they just want "picture of a leopard" - "this is" is going to get old very quickly. They might need more info like "picture of a leopard stalking". If in doubt, try to access your own content via a screen reader. I may be quite wrong so I'd welcome other insights...

That property is not accessible via the InDesign scripting DOM, unfortunately. If you add it as a request via https://indesign.uservoice.com/ I will gladly upvote it.