This issue of InDesign and Acrobat incompatibility in regards to Acrobat displaying all spans even when the Reading Order is correct has been around for over two years. We deserve to know what Adobe is doing about it.

Acrobat Team acknowledges the problem and blames InDesign:

"It's actually not an Acrobat issue, it's an issue with InDesign and how it's generating the Content that Acrobat is displaying correctly"

https://forums.adobe.com/message/10005333#10005333

InDesign Team acknowledges the problem and blames Acrobat:

"You'd have to talk to the Acrobat team about why they display in the Tags panel the way they do." - Adobe
https://forums.adobe.com/message/10225230#10225230

OR

"Our investigation suggests that the issue lies in the latest update of Acrobat and there is little that can be done at our end to resolve the issue.
The problem has been communicated to the relevant team.
In the meanwhile we are closing this thread for InDesign."

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/33755254-accessible-pdf-exported-from-id-contains-spans-in

And closes the issue.

What is Adobe doing to fix this issue? And don’t tell us that it is not a real problem for screen readers because the Tags panel is ok. When a certain government agency reviews files, they just use the Reading Order Tool when they make complaints against people who use your product. These are not the kind of people who will read all these posts of Adobe blaming each other and then saying it does not matter because some screen readers don't use the reading order. Adobe is basically saying that this feature is pointless. If it is pointless remove it or merge it fully with the Tags panel.

Besides, there is a lot more assistive technology and applications than just JAWS and NVDA that depend on the reading order and reflow being correct.

What is Adobe doing to fix this span issue?

And don’t ask me for more info or more files. You have these posts with detailed explanations and you have already acknowledged the problem exists yourselves and acknowledged that you can reproduce it yourselves. And don’t tell us to go to Forums for help. Because they will send us back to UserVoice.

Thank you.

Feature Requests / Bug Reports for the Accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (Version 2018.011.20063) on Windows 7 Professional.

For the Tags panel:
1. Option to create Lists <L> tags with a set number of List Items <LI> tags instead of one at a time. Time wasted creating one at time.
2. Option to created tables <Tables> tags with a set number of Rows <TR> tags instead of one at a time. Time wasted creating one at time.
3. Stop forcing all the Tags folders to all be opened when opening a PDF file! Not efficient if having to reopen a PDF with an extensive Tags structure. These folders need to remain as they were when last saved!

For the Reading Order Popup menu:
1. Button to create List Items <LI> and List Body <LBody> for selected text. Currently have to manually change the tag for example <P> to <LBody>. Action Wizard is hit and miss with Lists, so I create from scratch many times.
2. Button to create Links <Link> for selected text and/or images with a popup box for enter the URL while simultaneously creating its Annotation in the Content panel and in the Tags panel. This would save time.
3. The Background/Artifact button doesn't work as it should. Items still go to the Tags panel.

For the Content panel:
1. Within the Page contents, the option to delete Annotations by selecting it and/or with a right click. This would save time.

For Adobe Acrobat Pro DC software updates:
1. Need a way to save my current customized layout so that when the software is updated, it is not lost. Time consuming to recreate with every software update. (iOS and PC).

Thank you,
terri@fusiononline.com

It would be amazing if you didn't have to go all the way inside Cell Properties to check and see what a header cell's scope is set as, and what header cells are associated with any given cell in a table. If, once you were already inside Table Editor, that information would be available when you hover over any given cell (could be a feature that can be turned on or off), it would save so much time and effort in a very tedious job.

When a table is really large or complicated, it can be easy to lose your place when assigning associated headers and scope, and it would be a huge timesaver/help to have this info available on a hover-over.

Thanks for listening!

1. Brief Title

Losing german äüö (Umlauts) and letters in the Structure Tree when using "Add Tags to Document" in Adobe Acrobat DC (previous operation Number ADB-3207012-T1M7) German Language Problem?

1. Steps to reproduce the issue

Export a text document with german words that contain german umlauts (äöü), e.G.: "für, können, öfter, mögen" as a PDF without tags from InDesign or Word
Open the file in Acrobat DC
Go to "Tags" and open the little menu and choose "Add Tags to Document"
After the Structure Tree was created — save and close
when you open the document again in Acrobat DC and you can take a look at the tags in the Structure Tree and see that the letters are missing in the tags. Not only the umlauts but sometimes accompanying letters aswell
Examples: "für" -> "fr"; "können" -> "knen"
Conclusion: blind people can't read these anymore and the document is not accessible anymore!

The problem doesn't exist in Acrobat X and Acrobat XI.
The problem occurs with any font and all operating systems.
The problem was already documented with video and example-documents with the operation Number ADB-3207012-T1M7.

1. Operating system

The error occurs in all operating systems.

1. Expected results

Loss free texts in the Structure Tree with umlauts and all other letters so that the docment can be read by screen-readers.

1. Observed result

Missing letters in the Structure Tree after using "Add tags to Document" mainly in combination with Umlauts äöü and umlaut-ligatures.

When you have elements with no alt-text you get accessibility errors when running the checker. However, if you right click on the error and choose "fix" and walk through the items and mark them as decorative, instead of actually making them an artifact it simply changes the tag to "Artifact" which is not a valid tag and creates other errors. You then have to go in and properly designate the objects as Artifacts properly for the other errors to go away. VERY Frustrating. Come on Adobe Acrobat!

This is a repeatable condition and needs to be fixed immediately please!

Setting something as an artifact is a state and not a valid tag in the tags tree. Very frustrating that one tool designed to fix an issue actually creates other issues.

https://youtu.be/cLpXgisBgeg

Hyperlinks that span more than one line create multiple OBJR tags.
Reproduce: Create file in InDesign with links that span more than one line. Export to PDF/open with Acrobat. Find tag. Link will have two OBJR tags (or more if the link spans more than two lines). This is a bad experience for users of assistive technologies.
Sometimes manually fixing tags (deleting old links and creating new OBJR tag) isn't sufficient and designer has to resort to editing in the content pane or even using the Actual Text override to get the link to be read by assistive technology properly.
Please fix so that links that span multiple lines only have one tag.

I am disappointed that your company has decided to remove the read allowed option. As a dyslexic masters graduate who is now studying for a degree in a different subject you are actively discriminating against people with protected disabilities. I am very angry and upset by you discrimination and prejudice because you have a monopoly in the market place. You are using peoples disabilities to make money so they have to buy an advanced product. I hope that the media runs a story about this and your disregard for legislation concerning disabilities. I feel upset and angry at your biased decision.

Not only is the DC interface confusing and more time-consuming to use than the old one, but it does not comply with Section 508 of the Americans With Disability Act, which requires that the federal government, in its software procurement process, consider accessibility. Adobe Acrobat does not take into account the needs of users who rely on voice recognition software to accomplish actions that fully abled users accomplish with the mouse. When using voice recognition software, it is quick and easy to dictate a shortcut key or sequence of shortcut keys, but extremely slow, cumbersome and error-prone to get the software to click on a particular location. In the older version of Adobe Acrobat, most of what I did could be accomplished by dictating shortcut keys. In the new version, very few commands can be accomplished with keyboard shortcuts (or even with a series of them, as in Microsoft applications). As a result, I do almost nothing in Acrobat with my voice recognition software. Using the current version exacerbates the repetitive stress injury that I rely on voice recognition software to minimize. For one of many resources explaining that the availability of shortcut keys is an element of Section 508 compliance, see: https://www.justice.gov/crt/software-accessibility-checklist.

Please add keyboard shortcuts to reorder items in the tag panel.

Currently, a user must drag and drop tags in the Tags panel to change the reading order. It is easy to drag and drop items in the wrong place.

To recreate this problem:
1.) Open a tagged PDF
2.) Open Accessibility Tools
3.) Open Tags Panel
4.) Attempt to re-order items

It would be extremely useful to be able to do the following
With a tag selected, I want the ability to do the following with the keyboard:

-Move the tag up
-Move the tag down
-Move the tag in/under another tag (For example, placing a list item under a list)
-Move the tag out from another tag (For example, nested paragraph tags)

Within Adobe Acrobat there are options to Create a Portfolio of documents or to use the Attachment feature to create a group of documents. While keyboard shortcuts allow you to browse some of the menus, get to the document list, and select a document from the list. However, there is not a keyboard short cut to read the document in the view or to access the Open Document link. It seems to be only available through mouse selection.

This places users of these features at risk because the end user can't access the document to read it using only keyboard selections. Since these features lack keyboard accessibility, the product is not fully accessible.

Current Behaviour - If a PDF document has a title present in the “Title” document property then the default initial view of Acrobat Reader and Acrobat PRO is set to "File Name" rather than the "Document Title".

Impact - Acrobat's Accessibility Checks report the "Title" error while the title is already there. This requires the "Initial View" setting to be changed on each PDF manually.

Desired Behaviour - Set the “Initial View” to “Document Title” as default when a PDF is opened on Acrobat Reader DC and Acrobat DC Pro.

Why the feature is needed - All organisations want to publish their PDFs which are 100%. For example, all US Federal agencies are required to publish their PDFs which are Section 508 compliant. Acrobat Accessibility Checks tools allow to achieve Section 508 compliant by making the PDF's accessible. If PDF contains a title then it doesn't make sense to keep the Initial View to "File Name".

Please release a patch or add this feature in the next versions or Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Pro versions.