My company does a lot of design work that has to do with getting information about public health and safety to audiences for whom English is not a first language. Clear, careful communication of these topics and issues to all people—in their native languages—is essential. It ensures that everyone has the same access to information about their health and well-being.

When we translate our designs, that often includes languages that read from right to left, like Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew. However, there is currently no reasonable method for working with right-to-left text in InDesign for designers who work with both kinds of text. All the solutions currently available are clunky workarounds. Even with those workarounds, setting right-to-left text is still very difficult, so the margin for error working with text in these languages is still very high. That means the people who speak these languages are more likely than native english speakers to receive inaccurate information.

One solution is to download the Middle East version of Indesign, but that solution is only temporary because that version of the program doesn't handle Latin characters correctly. You have to constantly uninstall and reinstall the correct version for the language you are working with, which is not a viable option for projects that use both kinds of language.

Please integrate functionality for right-to-left typesetting in the English (North America) version of InDesign and, in general, expand language support for all languages within the software. I guarantee there are many designers who struggle with this issue but who are quietly putting up with the workarounds. Meanwhile, people who speak languages other than english are less likely to receive reliable, accurate information that is critical to their lives in their own, native tongue.