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I have an Indesign document that uses a 3-column, landscape, 8.5x11 page. I am trying to make this document accessible to the visually impaired, but I'm a newbie to InDesign.
I followed all the steps in Adobe InDesign accessibility and my PDF passes the Acrobat Accessibility Checker. But some of the manual checks are turning up issues that need to be fixed.
I don't want to manually fix these every time I update the document, so I need some guidance on a permanent/automatic solution.
Issue #1: The document has a long URL that wraps through three lines. When I look at the URL tags in the PDF, I see that there are three tags, and that the tags display in reverse order (end of the URL, then the middle, then the beginning).
Question: What do I need to do to get the URL in one tag when it comes out of the InDesign Export?
Issue #2: The document has a number of procedures. Our writing standard is that the name of the button you press or click is in bold. If it is a button with an icon, the icon graphic is also displayed.
Example: Press Hold . (the image is usually smaller; it has alternate text).
In the PDF, the "Press", "Hold", the graphic with alternate text, and the period are all separate tags. I expected "Press Hold" as one tag. I assume that having it in 2 tags is because the "Hold" is in bold in the text.
Question: What do I need to do to get all the text before the graphic in one tag when it comes out of the InDesign Export?
Issue #1: The document has a long URL that wraps through three lines. When I look at the URL tags in the PDF, I see that there are three tags, and that the tags display in reverse order (end of the URL, then the middle, then the beginning).
Question: What do I need to do to get the URL in one tag when it comes out of the InDesign Export?
This is an error with the current version of InDesign-to-accessible PDF.
Solution:
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Unfortunately, you're facing some major problems: You're trying to solve two things at once. You're inexperienced in InDesign (which requires some time to become proficient), and you're also trying to deal with making a file accessible, which requires a detailed knowlege of how to use all of InDesign's features.
I'd suggest that you get a free starting subscription to Lynda.com and take these two video courses:
Start with David Blatner's InDesign Essentials course:
InDesign CC 2018 Essential Training
And then view Chad Chelius' new and up-to-date Creating Accessible PDFs:
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Can you just give me some clues about what the issues might be? I can find help for fixing the issues using Google.
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Here is a clue: use paragraph styles and character styles to as complete a degree as you can.
What panel in Acrobat are you looking at tags? Why do you care how many tags it makes?
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here's what the tags for the "Press Hold <graphic>." step look like:
So, when the screen reader reads the text, the result is not a natural way of speaking.
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There are not many people who come to help in this forum who regularly work with accessibility issues.
You may also get help from this Acrobat forum:
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Although this isn't an answer to the questions you asked, it's still something you should consider when working in InDesign: using long urls for links not only creates layout difficulties — in your case, the url takes up 3 lines — but they also present accessibility issues.
When a url contains strings of numbers, special characters, or random letters, screen-readers need to read out each of those characters l-e-t-t-e-r-b-y-l-e-t-t-e-r — a truly horrible user experience (see https://webaim.org/techniques/hypertext/link_text#urls).
If you really must include a url link, for example, your InDesign document will also be distributed via print, then you might consider using a link shortener (e.g., bit.ly). It'll produce a jumble of random characters and is lousy for readability, branding, and memorability, but it will be a short jumble and it should also take care of layout issues. FWIW, my main concern with using bit.ly is that the reader has no idea of where the link points to. To reduce this potential uncertainty we use an in-house shortener with a custom url format so that the reader has some assurance that the link is ok.
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@colin_mac presents a valid case.
However, if Alt-text is on the URL, the URL itself can be as long as needed (such as for a complete URL for print). Assistive Technology users (AT) will hear the Alt-Text and skip reading the long URL. They'll never hear the lengthy "jumble" you describe that's the URL for this page, for example: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/accessibility-issues-in-pdf-from-indesign/m-p/9865181
So by adding Alt-text to the URL, we have a solution for:
Everyone gets what they need.
Hint: when writing the Alt-text, keep it short and direct to the point: why should someone click the link. Examples:
Our firm doesn't recommend using URL shorteners like bit.ly because eventually they expire and stop working, which leaves everyone stranded. Unless you're using a formal DOI (direct object identifier from DOI.org), I wouldn't use a shortener. Have run into too many problems with them over the years.
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Issue #1: The document has a long URL that wraps through three lines. When I look at the URL tags in the PDF, I see that there are three tags, and that the tags display in reverse order (end of the URL, then the middle, then the beginning).
Question: What do I need to do to get the URL in one tag when it comes out of the InDesign Export?
This is an error with the current version of InDesign-to-accessible PDF.
Solution:
Everything that is exported to the accessible PDF is based on 2 things: how you constructed the content in InDesign, and what version of InDesign you're using. The newest versions export to the latest accessibility standards and correct previous bugs.
If the text and graphic were created correctly in InDesign, you should have gotten this result in the PDF:
<P>
Press
Hold
<FIGURE>
.
That's one <P> tag with the content staggered and nested inside. It doesn't matter that the pieces of this sentence appear on different lines of code in the tag tree: what's important is that they are all nested inside one <P> tag.
Suggestion: make sure that the button graphic is an inline anchor after Hold and before the period.
Suggestion: as others have said, get training in basic InDesign and then take the advanced training in accessible PDFs from InDesign.
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Thanks, Bevi, for your excellent help.