Skip to main content
C
Clark Kenyon
Participating Frequently
June 24, 2025
Question

InDesign not exporting Alt Text to ePubs

  • June 24, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 350 views

Windows 10, ID ver. 20.4. I made an unpleasant discovery today. I’m working with a client who laid out a book in InDesign but didn’t feel like she could make the conversion to ePub. There are about 85 photographs in the book. I asked her to insert Alt Text for each of these in Bridge under IPTC Core/Alt Text (Accessibility). I checked each image under Object/Object Export Options in ID, and the Alt Text was there, under "From XMP:Alt Text (Accessibility)". So InDesign is picking up the tags. But when I exported the file to ePub and happened to check the html, I see that all the alt fields for these images are empty (alt=””). The images she worked on are the ones linked in InDesign, so it’s not that she was working on the wrong folder of images. She didn’t have an object style applied to the images and I thought that might be a factor. But when I created an object style, specified Alt Text Source as “From XMP: Alt Text (Accessibility)”, applied that to one of the photos, the object style did not pick up the Alt Text from the metadata in Bridge.
It seems like this was working a few versions back, but I can’t remember when or which version. What I had to do here is copy the Alt Text out of Bridge and manually insert it under “Custom” in Object/Object Export Options/Alt Text/Alt Text Source. Eighty-five times. When I exported the file to ePub, now I see the Alt Text field for each image has the proper info in it.
Is this some new issue with InDesign or am I doing something wrong?

2 replies

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
Community Manager
June 27, 2025

Hi @Clark Kenyon,

 

I connected with the product team regarding this, and in our limited internal testing, the Alt Text exported correctly when sourced from XMP metadata. It's unclear whether this might be specific to certain image types or some file-specific behavior.

To help us dig deeper, could you please share the InDesign file along with a few linked images that aren't exporting Alt Text as expected? You can package the file and share it with us via any of the public cloud sharing services like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. That will help us try and reproduce the issue on our end and move things forward.

 

Looking forward to your update!

Abhishek 

C
Clark KenyonAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 27, 2025

Thanks. Can you give me an email address to which to send the package? I don't necessarily want to post it here.

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Anubhav MCommunity Manager
Community Manager
July 1, 2025

Hello @Clark Kenyon,

Please send the link to the file via a Personal Message (https://adobe.ly/4nsbtHp), so we can check it.

Anubhav

Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Mike WitherellCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 25, 2025

Hi Clark,

I'm not sure, because the 20.4 version promised to fix exported code problems. Maybe you could try the 20.4.1 patch that came out yesterday, and see whether that fixes your code problem?

Mike Witherell
C
Clark KenyonAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 25, 2025

Thanks, but no joy.

    HARSHIKA_VERMA
    Community Manager
    HARSHIKA_VERMACommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    June 26, 2025

    Thanks for trying the suggestion shared by our expert. We are checking with the team about this issue and will get back to you if we need any additional information.

     

    Thanks,

    Harshika

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices