Text effects and exporting a tagged PDF

[Daniel227156698psk]

Hello all,

Attempting to export a flyer from InDesign to an accessible PDF.

Text effects like stroke, fill, and drop shadow export as separate tagged instances of the same text.

Is there any way correct this in the export settings, or do I just have to export to an interactive PDF from InDesugb and then artifact those duplicate instances of the text in Acrobat Pro?

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

I'm not an 'accessiblity guy' - so I'll throw my hat at it as to what is going on

It sounds like InDesign might treat text effects as separate elements during export. So, a drop shadow or stroke might be interpreted as an additional instance of the text, resulting in duplicate tags in the PDF.

Make sure that your paragraph styles have appropriate export tags. In the Paragraph Style Options, under Export Tagging, set the PDF tag to match the intended structure, like 'P' for paragraphs or 'H1' for top-level headings. This helps maintaining a clean tag structure. ​

Transparency Flattener Presets

Create a custom transparency flattener preset that converts all text to outlines during PDF export. This can prevent text effects from being tagged separately. To do this, go to Edit > Transparency Flattener Presets, create a new preset, and select 'Convert All Text to Outlines'.

However, be cautious, as this approach makes the text non-selectable and non-searchable, which might not be ideal for accessibility. ​

Post-Process in Acrobat Pro

If InDesign's export options don't fully resolve the issue, you can manually artifact the redundant text instances in Acrobat Pro

Open the exported PDF in Acrobat Pro.​
Use the Tags panel to locate the duplicate tags.​

Right-click on the redundant tag and select 'Change Tag to Artifact'.​

This method allows you to hide the duplicate instances from assistive technologies without removing the visual effects.

Some more thoughts

Use Effects Judiciously

Limit the use of text effects when creating documents intended for accessibility. Simpler designs tend to translate better into tagged PDFs.​

Test Accessibility

After exporting, always run an accessibility check in Acrobat Pro to ensure the document meets the necessary standards.​

Hope that helps somewhat

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

Strokes and fills on text are constructed as separate items in an output file (either a print file or PDF) out of necessity. i.e. Postscript/PDF code has no capacity to do both at once on the same path. You can see this if you open your PDF in Illustrator; you will find the separate instances; one for the fill and one for the stroke. Since InDesign can't know what your intent is, I think it tags all of it. Not sure of anyway around this.

btw: I've never seen an effect be tagged so are you sure that's happening? I might do a test later to see.

[Daniel227156698psk]

You are correct, Brad.  I didn't mean that the effect was tagged so to speak, but that each text effect applied to the text, (in this case a stroke and a drop shadow,) exported as a separate instance of the text tag, (meaning, of course, that a screen reader would read the same thing three times.)

This was actually a question posed to me by a co-worker who was making a flyer for print, (that she was told "we might also email it...we don't know..." hence the necessity for making it accessible.)

I recommended that she artifact the extra tags in Acrobat Pro, as Mr. Tyson also recommended above, but was reaching out to the group to see if anyone had any export suggestions for InDesign export to minimize tinkering with it on the back end.

My MAIN curiosity was why InDesign would export them as separate tags anyay, which you answered.

Thanks to both you and Eugene.  Given what you pointed out, I think I'll submit a feature request to "artifact text effects on PDF output."

Best, 

Daniel Trout

Visual Media Specialist

DLA Training 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

You can simply delete the duplicate tags in Acrobat if that works better for you, instead of Artifacting them.