Skip to main content
W
wburrer
Participant
May 19, 2020
Question

Accessibility tags read wrong

  • May 19, 2020
  • 5 replies
  • 2893 views

Hi all! Im making an old ADA Transition Plan accessible in Acrobat, but Im running into a problem with the on screen reader reading 'ADA' as a name like Ada instead of the separate letters A D A. How can I fix this, or other words that are read wrong? New to the process.

 

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

T
tayyaba_5891
Participant
October 5, 2024

To fix the screen reader issue, tag the text "ADA" as an acronym in Acrobat. You can also adjust pronunciation in the tag's properties by adding a custom pronunciation. For other misread words, check their tags and use similar adjustments. You might also try breaking up the letters with spaces ("A D A") if the acronym tagging doesn't work.

https://currentcommercialloan.com/

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
October 5, 2024
quote

To fix the screen reader issue, tag the text "ADA" as an acronym in Acrobat.

By @tayyaba_5891

 

A better, standards-compliant method is to use the Expansion attribute on the acronym.

 

1. Select the acronym's text.

2. From the Tag Panel's options menu, select Create Tag from Selection and choose the Span tag.

3. In the Tags Panel, locate the new Span tag, right-click, and select Properties.

4. In the Properties dialogue, switch to the Content TAB and spell out the acronym in the Expansion field.

 

 

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
A
alice_2020
Participating Frequently
October 5, 2024

If you needed a document to work with a specific screen reader, and you knew there was an issue with a specific abbreviation pronunciation, you could always set a span tag around the word an put the desired pronunciation in the actual text. This isn't necessarily a great method to go about universal accessibility, but it could be helpful to somone with this issue.

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
May 19, 2020

Expand the little square box with a Blue T to show the actual text content (1).

Select the text content, right-click, and the Expansion Text field should now be available. (2).

And this is done in the Content panel, not the Tag or Order panel.

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
W
wburrerAuthor
Participant
May 19, 2020

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like when I get to that point. Im also including a link to my google drive. Maybe Im just missing something? ADA Self Eval 1993 

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
May 19, 2020

Downloaded @wburrer's PDF file and found the following:

  • It was a legacy (printed) document that was scanned, converted to PDF, and OCR (optical character recognition) to provide readable text.
  • It was tagged, but can't determine by which method. Acrobat's Autotag utility? If so, that utility has different results depending on which version of  Acrobat Pro DC was used. Of course, the latest version gives better results. Usually.
  • Found that Page 2 isn't tagged at all. Without tags, the Expansion Text attribute can be typed in. That's why he got a "dead" greyed out field.

 

Solution:

  1. Tag Page 2 of the document. You can use either the Order Panel's Reading Order Tools (TURO), or run Autotag from the Accessibility panel (right side of the screen).
  2. Then add the Expansion Text on ADA and other text.
  3. Look for other pages that aren't fully tagged (I didn't get the chance to do this for you, but it's likely that if one page was skipped, other pages or partial pages are also untagged somewhere else). You can quickly see this, page by page, by viewing them in the Order Panel. If it's tagged, you'll see the grey content boxes numbered and in the order tree panel.

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
May 19, 2020

First, this isn't an error of Acrobat or your file. There's no need to send Adobe or anyone else your file because there is no bug.

Instead, the situation is caused by these 3 items:

  1. How each screen reader manufacturer has set their software to recognize and voice acronyms. Content creators can't control this.
  2. The end user's preference settings. Again, content creators can't control this.
  3. The requirements set in the PDF/UA-1 standards for accessible PDFs. This version of the standard doesn't fully address the voicing of acronyms, abbreviations, or other pronunciation issues, but it does define the use of the Expansion Text attribute for this purpose.

 

How to set Expansion Text.

  1. Open the Content panel, locate and select the individual letters/words. Expand the Container and Text icon so that you are viewing the actual content characters, as shown below.
  2. With the letters/words selected, right-click and select Properties.
  3. Select the 1st tab Content, fill in the Expansion Text field with appropriate text. For acronyms, we usually spell them out letter-by-letter with spaces in between to force most screen readers to voice it correctly. For some acronyms, we might type it phonetically, such as "eye ess oh."

 

This is a helpful step to take in a document, but not entirely necessary for each an every instance of the acronym. We generally put expansion text on just the first instance of it in the document, or if it's a larger multi-chapter document, the first instance in each section.

Another thing to keep in mind is that users are regularly faced with mispronunciations of the text and they usually instinctively stop, back up, and voice the word letter-by-letter when that happens. They'll figure out most acronyms.

But in the long term, Adobe and other software companies should give us the tools to put expansion text on acronyms. For example, when I'm in Word, PowerPoint, or InDesign, I should have a tool that lets me add the expansion text to all instances of "ISO."

We're not there yet!

 

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
W
wburrerAuthor
Participant
May 19, 2020

So I tried this, but the expansion text box is gray and Im not allowed to type into it. I used the action wizard to generate the tags, et al, and did not generate this document out of another program line InDesign. Is there any way to allow the use of the expansion text option? I cant find any way to turn it back on.

 

Thanks

R
Adobe Employee
RachitJain
Adobe Employee
May 19, 2020

Hi,

Thanks for reporting the issue to us. Can you please share the pdf via a weblink so that we can investigate and provide a solution to your problem.

 

Thanks

Rachit

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices