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Sienna Mac
Participant
February 13, 2023
Question

Accessible PDF - How to make screen reader skip over unnecessary text

  • February 13, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 2344 views

Hi there, 

 

I'm quite new to making PDFs on the scale that I am, but I am making them for a very small disability org. Previously I've noticed that many of the PDFs were not overly accessible, and I'm working to improve this. I have some basic understanding but I cannot work something out for the life of me. I am working with InDesign. 

 

When I have an article that goes over two pages, I have a subheading on the second page along the lines of 'x continued'. This works fine visually - you can ignore it if you want, or it helps remind some people. but the issue is when using a screen reader the flow of the article is interrupted ('...we found that-' /'ARTICLE CONTINUED'/ '-advocates were able to help...'. It's frustrating as heck and makes it very hard to understand. 

 

Similarly for longer documents I want to be able to number the pages without a screenreader reading them as it mostly breaks the flow. 

 

The only solution I've seen is convert the text into an image... but surely there's a better one? 

 

Thanks in advance 🙂 

 

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
February 13, 2023

"Continued" text or "jump text" like you've described, should be artifacted. For most assistive technologies, they are not needed: those who are sighted will ignore them just as most people do, and those who use screen readers read the entire text thread as one continuous story — even when it is threaded through multiple frames and reflows onto successive pages.

 

So treat them as page headers and footers: artifact them.

 

Screen reader users have other methods in their software to get the page number information, when they need it.

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
    tomeegee
    tomeegee
    Participating Frequently
    July 19, 2024

    I realize this is a year-old discussion, but I'd like to resurrect it to try and clarify a couple of things.  I am creating accessible readers from my InDesign files. I'm picking on most rules, but this one about continuous text and images stumps me. In the auto-created Articles, the sub-article header will be followed by a sub-article copy block, showing the first sentence of the continuous text. On a subsequent page, there is a separate Article for a text box, "Title, continued" , followed by a sub-article for the continuous text which again begins with the original sentence of the continuous text. Click on that and it bouces you back to start. I'm fearing the reader will also go back and start reading the same text again. 

     

    If I understand the direction above, should these text boxes on these other pages be turned into Artifacts, and the reader will read the continuous text from the first Article?

    And lastly, what if there is a photo midway through continuous text? How do you "interrupt" the reading and have the alt text read? 

    Willi Adelberger
    Community Expert
    Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 13, 2023

    Important is that page number and running header are not and never overriden. They have to be in the master/parent pages.

    Continues texts have to be in their own text frame touching the text flow text fraames, so they will actualize when pages are moved. In the tag settings make the object style to a non text element, even ivf text is inside. Text the reading in Acrobat.

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