SallijaneG

I had a similar issue tried all sorts of exports, and it turned out that I had duplicates of the font on the computer; when I got rid of the extras, the problem resolved.

One of the big requests was provided: footnotes!  Now we all need to keep clamoring for tagged PDF/EPUB options!

I do a lot of hybrid publications that are printed and viewed on the Web, I had someone demonstrate what a screen reader does with a PDF and was appalled at how inaccessible they are by nature.  This is mission-critical; we need to be able to produce accessible PDFs from Publisher files, and although I am personally in an organization that has someone who can take the extra time it needs from Publisher as compared to InDesign, it will be a major stumbling block for growth.  I am an amateur; my work is for grassroots groups that cannot afford Adobe and I personally refuse to spend the extra for a subscription, but I am an exception, willing to muddle through.  Generally, this will be a deal-breaker for many.

Baseline Grid makes sense; had not thought of that.

You are right for many use cases, but I still often run into situations where I have to switch programs for one tiny thing, which is annoying. I just want it all in one place and only change persona, not program.

The lock down has an important impact on some people....  talk to your doctor about it micornelius. I wish you get your life back some day.
You can opt out of the mailing list and... of this forum too.

WOW! Who could have thought this this generous offer would meet with negativity? Affinity continues to set standards.

I was really looking forward to the new version of Publisher.
And I was just about to hit the buy button for the Universal version.
That there is no well working ePub export is more than disappointing.
What do you want with a DTP program in 2022 that can't export ePubs???
I have also been using Jutoh for years and will probably continue to do so.
If there is no clear information from Affinity that this feature will be added soon, I will probably not update.
This is really sad news 😞

Yes. There is also Calibre, Kindle Create, and others. They are all useful programs, but they are not as powerful and have some errors that are detrimental when you want to get a quality ebook. You only get what you pay for... which is not much. 😇

I'd love to see this worked on as well. I know it's not a very sexy feature but it's such important functionality!

I agree with JohannaH. Accessible PDF output is essential to many of my clients, and I was so hoping that we would get tagged PDF export with this version. I don't fancy hand remediating 150-page reports from scratch for accessibility and I cannot afford to outsource remediation. So, back to InDesign for those types of documents.

Affinity 2.1 has arrived. Still no mention of accessible PDF and accessible E-PUB!
 2.1 update – May 2023
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/whats-new
5 things you need to know about Affinity 2.1
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-affinity-21/?utm_source=SpotlightEmail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SpotlightNewsletter
Affinity 2.1 introduces some highly requested new features, plus hundreds of usability improvements to Affinity’s most-loved tools. Here are five things (and more!) you need to know about the first free update for V2.
Write to Melanie and tell her to apply firm pressure to decision makers at Affinity!
Melanie Khareghat
Spotlight editor
As editor of Affinity Spotlight Melanie oversees the stories, interviews and tutorials published on the site. Outside of work she enjoys travelling, reading crime thrillers, Pilates and dabbling in a spot of oil painting. Get in touch with Melanie if you would like to contribute or be featured on Affinity Spotlight.

I, sadly, can only add my voice to the chorus here. Essentially, not being able to produce tagged PDF makes Publisher simply not usable for a wide range of work - particularly, in many countries all government work. 
I’d be happy if it required you to do some work to get it to full PDF/UA compliance. But tagged PDF really needs to come from within the app. It would be great if Affinity gave us any indication at all of the state of these issues. 

Not for the foreseeable future. 

The tags and reading order would be created when the PDF is exported from the source design/layout program.
We "assign" tags in the layout, but they don't actually get created until the PDF is being exported.
Affinity already knows how to make a PDF because any software that creates any kind of PDF must follow the international standards for PDFs called ISO 32000. Any PDF must be made to the standard so that the PDF file can be read or viewed by any brand of PDF reader. This is very common in the manufacturing and software world. It's crucial in printing as we see with out PDF/X requirements (another international standard from the ISO for press-quality PDFs).
All Affinity has to do now is add the standards for PDF/UA ISO 14329, an extended version of the PDF standards that includes the requirements for accessibility in a PDF, such as tags and reading orders.
They've already built their programming engine to create general PDFs, now add in the accessibility requirements. I won't be rude and say it's easy for Affinity to do that, but it's not that complicated, either. The hardest part is making the fricking PDF itself to begin with, and they've already done that.
@sheriffderek, since you already know HTML and CSS, let me make a comparison that could help put this into perspective.
HTML requires that standard tags be used to encase all parts of the content, like <p>, <h1>, <h2>, etc.  You can't publish a webpage without having your content tagged.
Desktop publishing, on the other hand, has traditionally NOT required this type of tagging, unless you were specifically doing XML, SGML, or tagged content publishing. Tags and accessibility are relatively new to the graphic design industry.
In websites, CSS is what's used to style the content, instructing a browser to take all <p> content and use Source Sans font, for example. Or take all <h1> content and color it RBG ## ## ##. Web developers design with CSS.
CSS is directly like what we do now with our Affinity Publisher paragraph and character styles: we define how a particular portion of text will look, its font, color, alignment, size, etc. — just like CSS does in HTML.
At this point, Publisher doesn't let us designate what tag to put on each type of text. Styles are the most convenient way to do this, as Adobe InDesign has shown for the past decade. As a graphic designer, I need to make a style for my subheadings that specifies Roboto Bold, 24 pt on 26 pt leading, left aligned, no hyphenation — and also tag it as <h2> when the PDF is exported.
We don't put tags inside the desktop publishing layout— no accessibility tags are in the layout. Instead, we give the instructions to add the tags when the PDF is exported. (Note, this is NOT XML, which does tag the content in the layout. PDF Accessibility tags are not XML tags.)
So Affinity needs to expand their current PDF-export utility to include accessibility tags and reading order, and then give us a way to assign the tags and control the reading order in our layouts.
And as a bonus, they could port that utility over to Designer, giving us the ability to make accessible info graphics and small projects in that program, too.
If Affinity did that, eat your heart out Adobe!  😁  Illustrator doesn't have a shred of accessibility in it.
Imagine if we designers had both layout and graphics programs that could make accessible PDFs.
Wow. Game changer for the industry.
 
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.
 

I've been focusing on HTML and web-specific accessibility tree type things, but this year I attended CSUN conference and learned a bit more about PDF accessibility.
I'm trying to think through the steps that would be needed.
When creating documents, we already use paragraph styles. Those aren't necessarily semantic, however they aren't a big leap from tagging things. I'm laying out a pricing sheet in Publisher right now (which is fairly simple) - but as an example, if there was a panel like the paragraph styles panel - but with h1, h2, h3, h4 - (or however they do it in PDF land) - it would be quick to select the headings and assign them to their respective hierarchical tags. There could be a panel for "Assistive technology"  and it could be like the "appearance" panel / and contextual. Whatever was selected could have its options. An image could have alt text. A block of text could have optional headings. Given that there's a history panel - and we're able to record state and key: value pairs for just about everything - I'd be curious what the hold up is here. Is it a gap in the real-world reasoning for how it works? (as you can tell - I don't know either / on the actual PDF output side) (or the legal side) - But as someone who would use a screen-reader or braille reader to read a basic PDF document, that part seems like something we can illustrate to help move this forward.
As it stands, Publisher can't be used to create official (legal) digital documents for any company - unless you plan on sending them out for remediation.

How about a new app, Affinity ePub?
would buy it immediately, since most apps creating or editing EPUB’s are not really good at all.

For now, I build PDFs in Publisher and then make them accessible with Acrobat DC Pro. Not ideal to say the least, but there's no way I'll go back to Indesign and Illustrator, so it is what it is. I'll just have to eat the monthly acrobact costs.

I've come up against this in the last few months. I've moved over to Affnity Publisher, and really need accessibility support. I don't want to got back to adobe.

Please Serif, add this to your apps.

+1 please. These accessibility tags can also bed used to optimise CVs and other documents for ATS and similar automated processing of documents.

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

bumping.  Has there been any movement with regard to Accessibility / tagged PDFs? 

What a Pity, I am quitte happy tou use Publisher. Tagged pdf and pdf bookmarks and it will be perfect

Please add PDF tagging, accessibility should be top priority.