Creating Accessible Documents with Adobe InDesign

Author: InDesign Accessibility Community of Practice—State of Minnesota

Note from the editor: The information below is part 1 of ongoing updates to the document published in 2019: Creating Accessible Documents with Adobe InDesign (PDF). The group will publish updates as they become available. We will always update the revised date when publishing. Want an alert about these updates? Subscribe to the Office of Accessibility newsletter.

Date: Revised April 2023.

This guide covers the basics for making documents accessible when using InDesign, an industry-standard page layout software offered as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud software suite. This guide is not intended to be a comprehensive training resource for the software. When you create files using InDesign, be sure to use each of the following methods at some point in your workflow to ensure your files are accessible.

Document File Properties

Under File> File Info you will find the File Information dialog box. Enter the file properties and author information. Adding them in InDesign sets up the properties for all users of the file. The properties will also export into the PDF – no need to re-enter if you have to export the file again at a later time.

Document Title should be the final title of your document.
Author should be your organization’s name.
- For internal-only documents this is sometimes the division.
- For collaborative documents you may want to list multiple agencies or groups.
Description is a short summary of your document.
Description writer (optional) field: Some agencies use this to identify the division responsible for the document.
Keywords are a type of metadata that help search functions. Be sure to check your organization’s policy on use and formatting of keywords.

Paragraph and Character Styles

Paragraph Styles

The role of paragraph styles in creating document structure

Document structure is very important for people who use assistive technology. These users may rely on headings to navigate electronic documents. This is similar to how many sighted people visually scan headlines in a document or on a website. Assistive technology relies on tags to identify where text and other elements fall within a document’s structure. For example, tags may indicate to screen reader software that a certain line of text is a heading, and the text below it is a bulleted list. It isn’t enough for text to simply have the visual appearance of a heading (such as being large and bold). You must also tag it as a heading to be accessible.

Create and apply tags through InDesign paragraph styles. Apply paragraph styles to all of the text in your document as a general InDesign best practice and to create proper document structure. It improves your productivity and creates consistency across your document.

Steps for creating a paragraph style from existing text

Select your text.
Select Type > Paragraph styles to open Paragraph styles panel.
Select New Paragraph Style from the panel menu to create a style with the selected text format.

Document text that will be tagged as an H1 is selected in the document. New Paragraph Style is selected from the drop-down menu in the Paragraph Styles panel.

Customizing a paragraph style

After creating a paragraph style, be sure to also use Paragraph Style Options to:

Disable Hyphenation. Some assistive technologies will read “dash” for each hyphen that is present. Individuals with cognitive disabilities may also have issues deciphering hyphenated words. Disabling this option increases the readability of your content for some readers.
Set Export Tagging for each style. Select the appropriate Tag for EPUB and HTML, as well as for PDF. These tag names may appear in the Tags panel in your PDF. As long as you specify the correct tag type in InDesign, their roles will be correct (e.g., H1, H2, P, L, A) in the resulting PDF.
Disable ligatures (uncheck the box). When you generate a PDF for a document that uses ligatures, you create a “character encoding – failed” error. Ligatures create a transition or connection between characters by
- connecting crossbars,
- removing dots over the i, or
- otherwise altering the shape of the characters.
Strategically choose your font, size, color and other paragraph style attributes to ensure that the visual hierarchy in your document mirrors the tag hierarchy. For example, H2s should be visually larger than H3s. Be thoughtful to create a cohesive and well-ordered collection of paragraph styles.
Assigning attributes like font color, bold, italics, etc., in the paragraph style is possible.
- Documents with a simple structure: you may only need to use Paragraph Styles.
- Other situations: it may be beneficial to set up Character Styles for this type of formatting instead of having multiple Paragraph Styles with specific formatting. Some sample situations include:
- Documents with several different visual styles or complex structures.
- Documents with similar formatting in multiple places.
- A visual style applied to parts of a paragraph but not the whole paragraph.

Use the Paragraph Styles panel to determine the structure hierarchy (headings) and tags.

Paragraph Style Options panel. Export Tagging tab is selected and EPUB/HTML and PDF tags are assigned to the selected paragraph style.

Paragraph Styles panel with different headings (Title H1, Heading H2, Subheading H3, basic paragraph) listed to assign to document text.

When you create a new paragraph style, you can assign its tag.

If you need to use similar styles in multiple documents, you can set up default paragraph styles in templates.