When a Section 508-compliant (accessibility for persons with disabilities) InDesign file is created in CC2017 and saved as IDML file, does the IDML file (when opened in a previous version, CS5) retain its Section 508-compliant accessibility features? Or are some accessibility features lost when an IDML file is opened in a previous version?
When you save as IDML, the InDesign file is converted to XML. When an IDML is opened, it is totally recreated using the current version of the software. If there were accessibility features which were created in CC 2017, they could only be re-created if they also existed in CS5. CS5.5 added some new accesibility features so they would be lost in CS5.
I'm not a accesibility expert so I can't tell you exactly what those features were but they included the ability to create Alt tags, for example. That I remember.
That is a save back through six major releases. It's absolutely a disaster waiting to happen to whomever is receiving that file so if I were you I'd cover myself with a detailed statement that you cannot be held accountable for lost features.
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