Acrobat 8 does not maintain InDesign structure

Question

I'm new to forums. I thought I had posted this problem yesterday, but cannot find it. So, I apologize if this is a repeat.
I use InDesign (CS3) to create forms that are exported to PDF using Acrobat 8 on a Windows XP platform.
The forms are uploaded to our Web. Users download, print, then fill in their information manually before submitting to our department. We cannot use dynamic online forms; the federal government requires hard signatures.
Our department gets thousands of forms submitted, all filled in manually. Not everyone is careful about their legibility and bad handwriting adds to our staff's workload. Therefore, this year we decided to create interactive fields.
We are a state agency and our Internet must be 508 compliant and accessible. Blind users' devices must be able to read the forms in a logical order to make sense of the information for them.
b The Problems:
The exported InDesign document --
] 1) does not maintain the reading order in Acrobat even though the structure looks fine in InDesign, and
] 2) treats separate frames (sometimes) as if they were one frame, causing unrelated text to be grouped within one tag.
I could work with the Touch-up Reading Order to change the reading order (but I should not have to!!). However, with some of the frames arbitrarily grouped together it is impossible to create the correct reading order for the blind, because I cannot separate the grouped frames.
b My Method of Creating Forms in InDesign:
] 1) Initially, I used styles (heading1, heading2, normal, etc), assuming Acrobat would recognize them as it does MS Word styles. That didn't work.
] 2) I mapped my styles to the tags, but the results were the same.
] 3) I even created two layers with my text on the top and my backgrounds on the second. Same results.
Because I created a 23 page document in MS Word that Acrobat handled beautifully, with no problems in reading order, I assumed InDesign and Acrobat would be compatible and even easier to work with. I am baffled as to why there seems to be a disconnect between InDesign and Acrobat.
I will appreciate any help I can get. I have spent days trying to understand what I am doing wrong. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to e-mail a response to: [email protected].

Answer 1

Tina,
I guess the only consolation is that we are not nuts! InDesign and Acrobat don't communicate as well as advertised. I work at a large university (36K students and over 3600 staff). I sent a message to our Web development group on this subject, and the only reply was someone else have trouble with reading order.
What is interesting is that I created a Word document of 26 pages, and it converted beautifully to PDF, except for the tables. Word 2003 has no way of creating accessible tables, but supposedly Acrobat does. Wrong! They provide the tags, but when applied, go unrecognized by the PDF Read Out Loud.
Considering the fact that 508 compliance is the law of the land, it would be nice if someone from Adobe read these messages and create patches that will solve these problems. Adobe developers: Are you out there? Are you paying any attention?