Auto-numbered heading and figures and accessibility

[TJG1970]

Hi there,

I'm involved in producing a large government document with several levels of numbered headings along with the numbered objectives and actions.

These items are all then referenced throughout the document.

Numbering and cross-referencing these manually is a nightmare as the document changes on a daily basis with figures being taken out or added, and the numbers of objective and actions altering regularly. If we have to do this manually I think there's a very high chance of error due to the timeframes we are working under.

However, one of the designers in here is insisting this is the only way we can do it as the accessibility software won't recognise the headings as headings and will only recognise them as lists.

Is this true?

[Mike Witherell]

Yes, it is true. InDesign's export fails to pass the tag information correctly. The work-around is to edit the PDF in Acrobat and involves (running an Accessibility check and) visiting the Tags panel in order to edit the Role Map. Working in the Washington DC area, we often deal with lengthy government-style documents.

[TJG1970]

Thanks Michael, I suspected as such.

I think changing it once at the end in pdf form is easier than manually changing headings, cross-references etc every time this document changes.

Cheers,
Tara

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Hi,

Could you be more explicite and show sample? 

(^/)

[Dan Rodney]

If I understand you correctly, you want to auto-number headings to make updating the document easier, but you don't want them to be considered a list for accessibility purposes. Here is one solution I can think of:

1. Use the numbered list for your paragraph style.
2. Before exporting, select that paragraph style and in the Paragraph style panel's menu (at the top right) choose Convert "Your Style Name" Bullets and Numbering to Text.

NOTE: Be sure not to save the original InDesign file after doing this.