InDesign Accessibility

By focusing on a few key steps, InDesign documents can be made accessible at the source. Ensuring accessible InDesign documents will save time and effort when exporting InDesign documents to other formats such as EPUB or PDF.

On this page:

• Metadata
• Headings and Styles
• Text Frames
• Lists
• Tables
• Images
• Links
• Table of Contents
• Forms
• Reading Order of Layers and Articles
• Master Pages
• Export
• Import
• Tools

Metadata

Metadata helps assistive technology announce content to users and know what language to expect. Add metadata to documents by navigating to File > Info and including a document title and language. Other metadata will help you and others in searching for files.

Headings and Paragraph Styles

To create accessible headings in InDesign:

1. Under the Type menu, open the Paragraph Styles panel
2. Select New Style
3. Double click on the newly created style to open the Style Editor
4. Assign a name under General > Style Name
   1. Best practice would be to name it H1, H2, etc. as appropriate
5. Modify the style’s visual appearance (font, font size, etc.) in Character format tabs.
6. In the Export Tagging category, use PDF Tag menu to set as appropriate
   1. Set paragraphs to P
   2. Set headings 1-6 as H1-H6 respectively
7. Select heading text in the document and choose newly created style in Paragraph Styles panel
8. Repeat process for different heading levels, paragraph text, lists, quotes, notes, etc.
   1. An existing style can be duplicated in the Styles panel
   2. Set a name in Style Name and select existing style to be duplicated in Based On: menu.
   3. Style new style as desired.

Do not use the text formatting toolbar.

Set all required styles in the Paragraph Styles panel.

Read more about headings and document structure.

Text Frames

For text columns or text divided by other document elements, link text frames together for proper flow of text. To create columns:

1. Create text frames
2. Click on the small red plus icon near the lower right corner of the frame
3. Select next text frame to be linked

Lists

Do not create lists manually with separate blocks of text and images of bullets. Use built in list tools:

1. Highlight text to made a list.
2. Click Bulleted List or Numbered List in the control panel.
3. Or, if you have defined a custom list style, apply appropriate paragraph style.

Use bulleted lists when the order is not important. Use numbered lists when the order is important, such as in steps to a process.

Review best practices for lists.

Tables

Create Tables via Table > Create Table

Tables must have either header rows or columns. To designate header rows:

1. Select the cells to be headers.
2. Select Table > Convert Rows
3. Select To Header

Tables created in InDesign will need additional work to ensure accessibility if exported to another format, such as PDF.

Read more about table accessibility.

Images

Anchor Images in their specific place within the document:

1. Click and hold on the blue square in the upper right area of the image container
2. Drag the image to its place in the document where you want the alt text to be read Remember to consider reading order of the image’s alt text relative to the surrounding text
3. Release the mouse button and the blue square becomes a blue anchor icon

Add Alt Text

Within InDesign consider “object export options” to be synonymous with “alt text” in other platforms.

1. Select the image container and navigate to Object > Object Export Options or Right-click the container (not the image itself) and select Object Export Options
   1. Choose the Alt Text tab, select Custom and type in alt text
   2. Move to the Tagged PDF tab
      1. Select Apply Tag and choose From Structure
      2. Under Actual Text Source select Custom
      3. Type in alt text description in the text field

To mark an image as decorative:

1. Select the image container and navigate to Object > Object Export Options or Right-click the container (not the image itself) and select Object Export Options
2. Move to the Tagged PDF tab, Apply Tag and choose Artifact

Review alt text best practices.

Images of Text

For an image, such as a logo or decorative lettering, it may be better to use InDesign’s actual text feature, rather than alt text.

1. Right-click on the object and select Object Export Options
2. Select Tagged PDF tab
3. Choose Custom from Actual Text Source menu
4. Type the text included in the image
5. Click Done

Links

1. Highlight text to be linked
2. Right-click and select Hyperlinks > New Hyperlink
3. Choose Link to web URLs to create a link to a webpage
4. Choose Link to Text Anchors to create a link to a place within your document
   1. Select the appropriate anchor from the list

Anchor Links

To create a link to somewhere else in the document, use anchors:

1. Navigate to Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks
2. Select the text to be used as an anchor
3. In the Hyperlink panel and select Option
4. Choose New Hyperlink Destination
5. Add a descriptive name
6. To link to anchor:
   1. Select text to be link
   2. Right-click and choose Hyperlinks > New Hyperlink
   3. Choose Link to Text anchor and choose anchor from drop down list

Read more about accessible links.

Table of Contents

1. Select Layout > Table of Contents
2. Add a title
3. Designate paragraph styles in Other Styles box and use Add button to move them to Styles in Table of Contents column
4. Select Create PDF Bookmarks checkbox
5. Select Make text anchor in source paragraph checkbox to allow you to create links within the document to headings, in addition to the links generated in the table of contents

Read more about InDesign Table of Contents.

Forms

Creating form fields in InDesign will make exporting to PDF easier.

To create a form:

1. Use the Frame Tool to draw a frame the size of the form field
2. Go to Window > Interactive
3. Select Buttons and Forms to open the Buttons and Forms panel
4. With the newly drawn frame selected, choose type of form field from Type menu in Buttons and Forms panel
5. In the dialogue that opens, the Description field will become the tooltip (necessary for accessibility) when exported to PDF
6. Select Ok

Form fields created this way will be automatically tagged in PDF format.

Reading Order

Layers

InDesign files will likely include at least three layers: Text, images, and background.

To ensure logical reading order:

1. Navigate to Window > Layers
2. Re-order text layers to read from bottom to top of the Layers list
   1. What is to be read first visually should be on the bottom of the list. What is to be read last should be at the top of the list.

Articles

To ensure logical reading order:

1. Navigate to Window > Articles
2. The Article Panel will open, blank
3. Open the more menu and select Use for Tagging Order in Tagged PDF
4. Click and drag the first item to the Article Panel and provide a name for the article when prompted
5. Click and drag each item on the page to the Article Panel in the order it is to be read
   1. The order of items in the Article Panel indicates the reading order for assistive technology reading from the top of the list to the bottom
6. Repeat for each page of the document

Master Pages

Master pages can be used as a template when creating InDesign documents. To use Master pages, select New Master from the Pages panel. Select Override All Master Page Items before creating articles and exporting to PDF.

Export

To export to PDF:

1. Navigate to File > Export
2. Choose Adobe PDF (Interactive)
3. Click Save
4. On the General tab, select:
   1. Create Tagged PDF
   2. Use Structure for Tab Order
   3. Forms and Media: Include All
   4. Embed Page Thumbnails
5. Select Export
6. Open PDF in Acrobat Pro to verify accessibility

Note: InDesign often exports excess tags. In Acrobat, use the Preflight tool to remove them:

1. Under Tools, choose Print Production
2. Select Preflight
3. Select the wrench icon and under Document select Mark all non-structure elements as artifact
4. Click Fix

To export to EPUB:

1. Navigate to File > Export
2. Choose EPUB (Reflowable).
3. Click Save
   1. Add a title to Metadata
   2. Under Object settings choose CSS Size option of Relative to Text Flow

Import

When a Word document is imported into InDesign, only the text will be imported by default. However, Style Mapping allows for an import to retain style and structure. To do so:

1. Navigate to File > Place
2. Under Format choose Customize Style Import
3. Select Style Mapping
   1. If you do not have any existing styles you will need to map the imported styles to heading tags in InDesign
   2. If your InDesign document already has existing styles, match the import equivalents to the styles from the drop down list
   3. Click Ok
4. Click Ok
5. Click in the document to place the imported text

Tools

MadeToTag is an InDesign plug-in that adds tools to create InDesign documents for export as accessible PDFs. Read MadeToTag’s seven steps to making tagged PDFs in InDesign.

Consider the Government of Minnesota guide to accessible InDesign documents.