Mapping styles to tags is prevented by an unremovable link in story editor

[Kasra Y]

Hello,

This question is about accessibility and tagging.

When trying to map styles to tags using the tags panel, sometimes I get the following error:

“Cannot tag the selected text because the text contains part of a hyperlink or cross-reference. Change the text selection to include the entire hyperlink or cross-reference.”

I’ve ensured that both my hyperlinks and cross-references panels are empty. (i.e. the document has no hyper link or cross references). However, when I use the Story Editor with Show hidden characters option on, I can see a following link icon between my text:

I can’t delete or remove it, even if a select and delete the larger portion of text that surround it.

I also tried converting the document to IDML and back with no results.

This prevents me to tag the document and create accessible PDFs.

I had this issue over server versions of InDesign including my current 16.4.x86.

Thank you,

Kasra

[Willi Adelberger]

The selection must include or exclude the crossreference complete. I would suggest for easier editing that you apply to the character style of the cross reference a warning color. At the end you can remove that color.

[Chad Chelius · Accepted solution]

Kasra, you're going down a rabbit hole here. Mapping styles to tags is not how you make a document accessible. This was a method we had to use 10 years ago but after InDesign CS 5.5, that method went away in lieu of a more seamless approach. I can't explain the entire process here, but I'd suggest watching my course on PDF accessibility. It's much easier than what you're currently doing! 

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Isn't this the XML tags panel? I guess she is confusing this tags with the map styles panel...

[Chad Chelius]

Yes it is the XML map styles to tags panel. She just needs to use the export tag option within each style.

[Kasra Y]

Hi Chad,

Thanks for the advice, and by the way, I used to be a student of that fantastic course you've mentioned 🙂

I knew that I can define tags for each style within the styles panel, but I wasn't aware -and could not find any mentione- that "map styles to tags" feature is deprecated.

This raised another question, and apologies maybe I misundestood the whole concept: To my understanding, list of supperted PDF tags are larger than the limited items on indesign's UI drop-down menu (P,H1-H6,Artifact). Namely, there are no tags for tables, cells and lists.

How can I address this limitation? Letting indesign map them automatically and check/ammend the results in Acrobat?

Kind regards,

Kasra

[Chad Chelius]

Thanks Kasra!

To be clear, "Map Styles to Tags" and "Map Tags to Styles" hasn't been deprecated. It's still used for imort and export of XML in InDesign. I'ts just not used to make PDF files accessible.

[Kasra Y]

Thanks Chad!

Kind regards,

Kasra