[Athen] Making accessible info with InDesign?

[John Gardner]

Doug and Steve, thanks for the help. I have read Doug's indicated Adobe page from top to bottom, and my initial reaction is that somebody must be crazy. I am trying to help a woman who creates the newsletter for the high school
I graduated from a couple millenia ago. She is a competent computer user but is not a geek who can understand the language on that page. Nor am I actually. And now Steve tells me that even that ridiculous instruction set is inadequate. No wonder that PDFs are seldom accessible. Nobody would take the considerable time and effort to make a PDF accessible unless she has a gun aimed at her head.

Maybe the somebody who is crazy is us to put up with such nonsense. Unfortunately, many people of the generation who get this newsletter still read it on paper, and PDF is good for that. Too bad that Adobe doesn't care to make the process more automatic.

I don't know what advice I can give to this editor. For sure I can't direct her to this Adobe page that would cause most people to just freak out. The major problem with her newsletters is that much of the text is inside graphics. Since I don't know how it gets converted to graphics, I can't even tell her what not to do. Any advice from you? This experience has given me even more respect for the hard-working people on this list who have no choice but to put up with the nonsense!

Very much thanks.
John


-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: Saturday, May 8, 2021 6:40 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Making accessible info with InDesign?

The process that Adobe describe on that page is very good as far as it goes, but there are a lot of things it doesn't cover. One of the joys of accessible PDFs is that even after 15 years of creating, testing and remediating them, we still learn new things on every project.

You can teach yourself from all the disparate sources of information, but I recommend getting professional training from Ted Page - see https://accessible-digital-documents.com/training/accessible-pdfs-from-indesign/ 

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Hayman, Douglass
Sent: 07 May 2021 23:21
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Making accessible info with InDesign?

John,

I see what you mean about their site, if you're talking about this page for example:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-accessible-pdfs.html

It has an image that shows a summary of what needs to be done in InDesign as a list and then an arrow going over to PDF icon.  The image has no ALT tag.  

I too have been exploring InDesign today for a couple of reasons.  
1.   To get some basic understanding of it just in case that is what our campus uses for the student newsletter which is currently made in Canva and exported as a horribly tagged PDF.
2.  Level Access told me they used InDesign to create their well done brochure The State of Digital Accessibility then exported to PDF.

Since I'm mid-way through the same journey as you I don't have a lot of info to share, yet.

I did find the early part of this video useful on looking at some of the settings in InDesign that impact making an accessible PDF:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eiqw3rBWDWk




Doug Hayman
IT Accessibility Coordinator
Information Technology
Olympic College
dhayman at olympic.edu
(360) 475-7632 (currently working remotely and don't have access to this phone)

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of John Gardner
Sent: Friday, May 7, 2021 1:47 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] - [Athen] Making accessible info with InDesign?

CAUTION: This email came from a non-OC system or external source. Beware of phishing and social engineering!


Hello all, I tried to find info on the Adobe site on how to get accessible output with InDesign. There is a paragraph saying that there is info on that topic, but it has no links, and I have just struck out. If anybody on the list can point me to info on using InDesign for accessible output, I would be most grateful.

I continueo to marvel that the Adobe accessibility web site is itself not accessible. The site violates one of the most fundamental guidelines - of not using things like "click here"... This one has a zillion links, all of which say "read more" and it is not always clear what a given link refers to. Very helpful.

John


John Gardner
President
541.754.4002 x 200
www.viewplus.com



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