Accessibility: It's the Law - InDesign User Group

Accessibility
Vicky Richards
Issues and Solutions
• Drop Caps
The drop Cap is placed in its own container –this issue needs to be fixed in the content panel in the PDF
• Lists/Table of Contents (TOC)
InDesign will only export and map to certain tags; Lists, List Items, TOC, and TOC items export as P tags.
These items have to be tagged manually by adding parent tags [L] [TOC], and sub directing the [LI][TOCI]
tags. [LI] tags require additional tiers of tags [Lbl] for the bullet and [LBody] for the text. Additionally, the
Style names have to be assigned the correct Tag in Acrobat under the Role Map.
• Tables
InDesign exports all tables without Table Heading [TH] Tags. Headers need to be manually tagged in the
reading order panel through the Table Editor feature. Complex tables also require data/header association,
through the Table Editor feature.
• Reading Order
Changing the Reading Order (RO) will change the structure of your tags. RO is derived from the order in
which you placed containers in the InDesign document. Retagging a document in Acrobat can be difficult.
It is better to fix the RO in InDesign. You can change the RO by rearranging the stacking order in the Layers
Panel (InDesign CS5) or by arranging containers on a page in the order they are intended to read. Choose:
Object > Arrange > Bring to Front for each container on a page to set the in the intended reading order.
• Hyphenation
InDesign will export optional hyphens as actual hyphens creating three separate containers for the word (first
syllables, hyphen, last syllables). Whenever possible, hyphenation should be turned off in InDesign.
• Hyperlinks
Links export outside the LINK and LINK OBJR tags. The link text container needs to be nested into the
appropriate tag)
• Span Tags
Optional/non-visible characters (manual line break, tab, extra returns, etc) will result in Span tags in the PDF.
Use Nonbreaking Spaces or the No Break option instead of manual line breaks and to avoid odd breaks in text
(widow/orphans, phone numbers, hyperlinks), and Space Before/Space After settings instead of multiple returns.
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