Adobe InDesign

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Adobe InDesign CS generates tagged accessible PDF files. You can improve the accessibility and reuse of Adobe PDF documents by adding tags to the InDesign document before you export. If your PDF documents don't contain tags, Adobe Reader or Acrobat may attempt to automatically tag the document when the user reads or reflows it, but the results may be disappointing. If you do not get the results you want in the exported Adobe PDF file, you can use tools in Acrobat 6.0 Professional and later to edit the structure of tagged PDF documents. For the most advanced tools, use Acrobat 7.0 Professional.

When you apply tags to a document for PDF export, the tags do not control which content is exported to PDF, as is the case with XML export. Instead, the tags give Acrobat more information about the document's structural contents.

Preparing an Adobe InDesign Document for Making Accessible PDF

Tagging

There are a variety of ways to work with tags in InDesign CS. This example will illustrate the easiest method for adding tags to an unstructured InDesign CS2 file.

InDesign CS2 allows you to add tags to an untagged InDesign document. Choose Window > Tags to display the tags palette. To determine if your InDesign document is structured, select View > Structure > Show Structure, or Alt + Ctrl + 1, to display the InDesign structure pane. At this point your untagged document will look something like the example shown in Figure 3 - 8 .

Figure 3 - 8 InDesign Tags Pane and Palette Prior to Adding Tags

The next step is to add tags to the InDesign document. To do this, choose "Add Untagged Items from the Structure Pane Menu (See Figure 3 - 9 Selecting Add Untagged Items from the InDesign Structure Pane) .

Figure 3 - 9 Selecting Add Untagged Items from the InDesign

Structure Pane

This action causes a structure tree to appear in the structure pane and color coded tags to appear in the tags palette which correspond to colored items on the document view.

Figure 3 - 10 Result of Adding Untagged Items Command in InDesign CD

To determine which graphic images on the page correspond to individual figure tags appearing in the structure pane, highligh the figure tag and right click to select the "Go to Item Option." The graphich object will be highlighted with a blue border and small square "handles" will appear on the corners and the middle of the graphic (See Figure 3 - 11 Relating a Figure Tag to a Page Graphic in InDesign) .

Figure 3 - 11 Relating a Figure Tag to a Page Graphic in InDesign

Note: You can also relate an item on a page with its associated tag by using the InDesign Selection Tool, or the Direct Selection tool to highlight the item of interest. Right click on the selected item and choose Select in Structure. The tag representing that page item will be highlighted in the Structure Pane (See Figure 3 - 12 Locating a Page Item in the Structure Pane) . The ability to relate items in the page view to items in the structure view is quite useful for establishing a logical read order for items intended to be exported to PDF and XML from InDesign CS.

Figure 3 - 12 Locating a Page Item in the Structure Pane

There are other ways to incorporate tags into InDesign CS2 documents. If you've styled your document using paragraph and character tags, you can map those styles to XML tags, and let InDesign apply the tags to the styled content. You can map more than one style to the same tag, and edit the mappings at any time. Refer to the InDesign documentation for detailed information about these other techniques.

Adding ALT Text to Graphics in InDesign

If you want screen readers to describe graphical elements that illustrate important concepts in the document, you must provide the description. Figures and multimedia aren't recognized or read by a screen reader unless you add alternate text to the tag properties.

The Alt text attribute lets you create alternate text that can be read in lieu of viewing an illustration. For example, instead of a simply displaying a static image of an Adobe logo in your PDF file, the text "Adobe Logo" would be read by a screen reader or Adobe's Read Out Loud function.

ActualText is similar to Alt text in that it appears in lieu of an image. The ActualText attribute lets you substitute an image that is part of a word, such as when a fancy image is used for a drop cap. In this example, the ActualText attribute allows the drop cap letter to be read as part of the word.

When you export to Adobe PDF, the Alt text and Actual Text attribute values are stored in the PDF file and can be viewed in Acrobat 6.0 and later. This alternate text information can then be used when the PDF file is saved from Acrobat as an HTML or XML file.

With Adobe InDesign, it's necessary to add the Alt attribute to the Figure tag. Right click on the desired Figure tag and select "Add New Attribute" (See Figure 3 - 13 Adding an Attribute to a Figure Tag in InDesign CS) .

Figure 3 - 13 Adding an Attribute to a Figure Tag in InDesign CS

To apply Alt or ActualText attributes to the image

If necessary, choose View > Show Structure to display Structure pane, and choose Window > Tags to display the Tags palette.

Select the Figure element in the Structure pane, and then choose New Attribute from the Structure pane menu.

In the Name field of the New Attibute Dialog, type either Alt or ActualText (this feature is case-sensitive).

For Value field of the New Attribute Dialog, type the text that describes the image (See Figure 3 - 14 New Attribute Dialog in InDesign CS)

Figure 3 - 14 New Attribute Dialog in InDesign CS

Generating Accessible PDF from Adobe InDesign

Once the Adobe InDesign CS file has been set up to generate accessible PDF by using structure tags and associating an Alt attribute or ActualText attribute for each Figure tag appearing in the document, you are ready to export the InDesign document as an accessible PDF file.

To do this, you select File > Export from the InDesign menu or type Control +E. If using the operating system dialog, choose Adobe PDF as the "Save as type.: If using the Adobe Export dialog, select Adobe PDF as the Format.

Select Save and the Export Adobe PDF dialog will appear Be sure that the check box labelled Create Tagged PDF is indeed checked. Also having Bookmarks and Hyperlinks checked also contributes to the accessibility of the resulting PDF document. (See Figure 3 - 15 Export Adobe PDF Dialog in Adobe InDesign CS) .

Select export and an accessible tagged PDF will be generated from the Adobe InDesign document.

Figure 3 - 15 Export Adobe PDF Dialog in Adobe InDesign CS