Adobe knows about this "feature" and doesn't consider it a bug.
They call those tags "custom tags."
Most of us call them useless stupid *&^%$#@ tags.
Whatever you want to call them, those tags are not the standard PDF tag set defined in the ISO 32000 standards for PDFs. Which, BTW, Adobe wrote and still maintains with the ISO.
When we designers make a heading style in InDesign and set it to export as H2 in the PDF, we really really really want H2 to be the actual name of the tag in the PDF, not "Big_blue_subhead" (which is the name of the formatting paragraph style in InDesign).
Work around (that I hope is temporary):
If you have a recent copy of Acrobat DC Pro, it now has a setting to show the "Role Mapped" tag instead of the stupid *&^%$#@ tags.
- Role-Mapped tag = the real PDF tag that you set in InDesign's export tags settings.
- stupid *&^%$#@ tags = the made up tag names that Adobe creates from the names of our paragraph style names.
From the Tag Panel's options menu, select Apply Role Mapping to Tags and you'll now see the Role-Mapped tags in the tag tree rather than the stupid *&^%$#@ tags.
HOWEVER, make sure you check the Role Mapping before testing or publishing the PDF because sometimes the InDesign-to-PDF conversion doesn't get things right.
From the Tag Panel's options menu, select Edit Role Map. Drill down until you see a list of tags that looks something like these:
- Normal_Paragraph_ / P
- No_paragraph_style_ / P
- Main_Text / P
- Cover_Title / H1
- Large_Heads / H2
- Small_red_subheads / H3
Be concerned ONLY with what comes after the /, such as H1, H2, and H3. The stuff after the / are the real PDF tags that all assistive technologies will see and process, regardless of the stupid *&^%$#@ tag that appears before the /.
Check to make sure that every stupid *&^%$#@ tag maps to the correct "real" tag. Example:
Large_Heads should map to H2 and not P
Why is this so?
What's mind-boggling is how this "feature" ever became the default when a PDF is exported from InDesign. As stated, Adobe created the ISO 32000 PDF Standard when it transferred PDF into the public domain in 2008.
Today, Adobe's engineers are still on the committees that update and maintain the ISO 32000 standard. You can read about the standard PDF tags at https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/editing-document-structure-content-tags.html#standard_pdf_tags
Yes, "custom" tags are allowed in PDFs, but the overwhelming majority of PDFs use the standard tags, especially for accessible tagged PDF and conversion to other publishing technologies. I'm going to estimate that over 95% of PDFs created need the standard tag set, not custom tags.
The request to make to Adobe:
Make the standard PDF ISO 32000 tag set be the default when a PDF is exported from InDesign, especially when the designer has deliberately defined the final tag in the InDesign paragraph styles Export Options.
Make the custom tags optional, not the default.
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If you want to see this changed, VOTE for it at https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/38306047-export-interat...
| Bevi Chagnon | Designer & Technologist for Accessible Documents
| Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
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