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Participant
May 23, 2023
Question

Accessibility Tags & Reading Order Not Recognized by NVDA Screen Reader

  • May 23, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 1411 views

Hi! I could really use some help. I've been working on making a school district's files accessible, but no matter what I do to different files' reading order and tags, the NVDA reader doesn't seem to recognize the changes I make. For example, Acrobat will show I've labeled something as H1. NVDA will reference it as H2 when reading aloud in Chrome or Edge. It also will not ignore some artifacts at times. It seems to work fine in Adobe Acrobat when reading from there, but not in another system where most people will be accessing the file. I've attached one of them here. Any help would be appreciated!

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3 replies

Participant
December 25, 2024

HAPPY Christmas.

Participant
December 25, 2024

 loxzii ghosar spirit

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
May 23, 2023

You'll read it here many times...browsers are not PDF/UA-1 compliant.

Translation: they do not interpret PDFs correctly, nor do they have a full set of PDF features, such as recognizing tags, filling out PDF forms, or having working accessible hyperlinks.

 

Doesn't matter which screen reader or assistive technology you use: it's dicey how the PDF will be when viewed in a browser.  The problem is with the browser manufacturers — all of them at this time — not with your PDF file, not with with assistive technologies, and not with Adobe.

 

Therefore, if you're making accessible PDFs, you must test them using Adobe Acrobat Reader, Adobe Acrobat Standard or Pro, or another brand of PDF reading software by another company.

 

But not in a browser.

 

Hope this helps.

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |