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Create accessible PDFs

Created on 09th October 2026 at 09:27 by Jamie O'Connell

Guidelines such as the European Accessibility Act and WCAG 2.0 require, that accessible PDFs be produced. As with Adobe® InDesign®, one2edit™ can help you achieve this. These instructions will help you take the right steps to correctly produce PDFs.

NOTE: You will always need Adobe® InDesign® for preparation. You will also always need Adobe® Acrobat® for post-processing, as InDesign unfortunately does not contain all needed functionality for accessible-PDF output.

Document Preparation in InDesign

First, you must prepare your documents accordingly. It makes sense to establish these steps as your default, so that you can always edit and output documents in the best possible way.

Please refer to Adobe's instructions for preparation in InDesign: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-accessible-pdfs.html#RequiredstepsinInDesign

Required steps in InDesign

Use paragraph styles consistently throughout your document.
Establish export-tag relationships between InDesign styles and PDF tags.
Anchor images within the content flow.
Add alternative text for images.
Incorporate internal document navigation mechanisms.
Establish content order in the Articles panel.
Specify a document title and description as metadata.

Export PDF settings

You should apply the following settings in the PDF joboption (i.e. PDF preset) that you will use for outputting accessible PDFs:

To be accessible, the exported PDF must be tagged, so make sure you select the Create Tagged PDF option in the Export dialog box.
In the Export to Interactive PDF dialog, select the Use Structure for Tab Order option to save yourself that step in Acrobat later on. To activate bookmarking, hyperlinks, cross-references, and buttons, set the Forms and Media option to Include All.
All other settings in the dialog are optional and subject to your specific needs or preferences.

Please make sure to upload your adapted joboption file to one2edit (via: Settings > PDF Presets).

Post processing in Acrobat

Set the language in Document Properties.
Change display name from Filename to Document Title.
Set the tab order to use the document structure in the Page Thumbnails pane.
Run the Acrobat accessibility check.

More information

PDF/UA (wikipedia.org)

What is PDF/UA? (adobe.com)

Creating accessible PDFs (adobe.com)

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