[Athen] [EXTERNAL] - InDesign and Reading Order (not tag order)

[Steve Green via athen-list]

We don’t usually get involved with the creation of source documents, but following the earlier posts I looked at the InDesign files for some projects. The contents of the Layers panels made no sense. Some documents had all the content on one layer. Other documents didn’t have any content in the Layers panel,  while in others only part of the content was in the Layers panel. Can anyone explain this? Do you need to add content to the Layers panel or should it be automatic?

I totally agree with Philip’s comments regarding ChatGPT.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd

From: Philip Kiff <phil at d4k.ca>
Sent: 16 April 2025 15:38
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Cc: Eckelberry, Robin <Robin.Eckelberry at nelnet.net>; Steve Green <steve.green at testpartners.co.uk>; 'Hayman, Douglass' <dhayman at olympic.edu>; enews at toptechtidbits.com
Subject: Re: [Athen] [EXTERNAL] - InDesign and Reading Order (not tag order)


Folks who were discussing how to configure Reading Order (not tag order) in InDesign last week may want to check out a new InDesign script provided (for free!) by Chad Chelius and Keith Gilbert.



The script is intended to automate the process of adding everything in your Layers panel to your Articles panel in the correct order - so you don't have to repeat the process of ordering your content first for tag order and then re-doing it again for reading order. More detail and a link to the download is available in Chad's post "Setting the Order for PDF Files in InDesign" posted to LinkedIn on March 26, 2025:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/setting-order-pdf-files-indesign-chad-chelius-ads-d1tae/



Also, for what it's worth, I'm not a fan of folks plugging questions into ChatGPT and cutting and pasting the response into mailing lists like this one. I think it generally degrades the value and accuracy of the mailing list. In this case, while some folks found ChatGPT content to be useful, I personally thought that ChatGPT's response failed to distinguish clearly between "tag order" and "reading order" and therefore missed one of the crucial components of the original question. Besides which, ChatGPT is just going to regurgitate what it finds elsewhere, rather than providing current, focused advice from experts or experience, which is what I rely on this list and the WebAIM list for. Just my 2 cents.



Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications


On 2025-04-07 5:51 p.m., Eckelberry, Robin via athen-list wrote:
Hi Doug, Steve, and Aaron!

Thank you for all of your help. I tested some more on my own and also reached out via WebAIM.

What I found and trialed echoed the Chat GPT note.

To be able to have the reading order correct in Acrobat, you have to adjust the order of the Layers in InDesign. The last layer is what will be read first, and the first layer is what will be read last. So yes, ordering from bottom to top in InDesign is what worked for a correct Order panel for me in Acrobat.

I'm glad that process has gotten better since 2021!

Thanks again!

P.S. Aaron I owe you some Google Workspace findings, too.


________________________________
From: Top Tech Tidbits
Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:41 PM
To: 'Steve Green'; 'Access Technology Higher Education Network'; 'Hayman, Douglass'; Eckelberry, Robin
Subject: RE: [Athen] [EXTERNAL] - InDesign and Reading Order (not tag order)
[snip]



From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu><mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Steve Green via athen-list
Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:29 PM
To: Hayman, Douglass <dhayman at olympic.edu><mailto:dhayman at olympic.edu>; Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu><mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>; Eckelberry, Robin <Robin.Eckelberry at nelnet.net><mailto:Robin.Eckelberry at nelnet.net>
Subject: Re: [Athen] [EXTERNAL] - InDesign and Reading Order (not tag order)



In 2021, I wrote a short training course on using InDesign to create PDFs. At that time, I wrote the following:



  *   The reading order in the Content panel is set by the order in which objects are created.
  *   It cannot be changed except by deleting an object and adding it back in, in which case it becomes the last item in the reading order. This can easily be done using the following steps on each object in turn:

     *   Select the object.
     *   Press Ctrl+X to delete it.
     *   Press Ctrl+V to paste it back in.
     *   Reposition it if necessary.
     *   However, this may break the order in the Articles panel.



It is possible that something has changed since then, but I doubt it. It if has, do let me know.



Since you would be deleting and re-adding complete text frames, this should be much faster than moving individual lines in Acrobat. Obviously, creating content in the correct order would be best, but this can be really difficult.



Alternatively, you can use Acrobat’s Reading Order Tool to group all the lines in each paragraph. You would still need to put the paragraphs in the right order in the Content panel, but again it’s faster and less error-prone than moving individual lines.



Steve Green

Managing Director

Test Partners Ltd
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