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sunhawk
sunhawk
Participant
May 11, 2026
Question

Acrobat crashes when using Visual Highlight option on NVDA screen reader

  • May 11, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 85 views

When using the screen reader NVDA, there is an option in the settings called Visual Highlight that adds a coloured outline around the current focus item, this is very useful to see where you are currently located in the PDF.  Unfortunately, lately there is an Acrobat bug where turning on Visual Highlight when using Acrobat to read a PDF results in Acrobat crashing.  Can this please be fixed in Acrobat?

This seems to happen most often when moving by keyboard to a link, but may happen for other tagged items as well. I emailed the NVDA company who confirmed the issue is not with NVDA but with Acrobat.

The Visual Highlight option is also very useful for QA and creating educational screenshots about using NVDA for accessible PDF testing, I would consider this a High Priority ticket!

      2 replies

      Amal Jaiswal
      Community Manager
      Amal JaiswalCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      May 20, 2026

      Hi there 

       

      Thanks for sharing the required information. We have logged the ticket with the engineering team, Please give us some time to get this checked. We will keep you posted as soon as we get any information.

       

      Thanks for your time and patience.

       

      ~Amal

        sunhawk
        sunhawkAuthor
        Participant
        June 11, 2026

        Hi ​@Amal Jaiswal just following up on your post here, has there been any progress with fixing this bug that causes Acrobat to crash?

        Amal Jaiswal
        Community Manager
        Amal JaiswalCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        June 11, 2026

        Hi there, 
         

        The development team is working on this, please try updating the Acrobat application to the latest version  26.001.21662 Planned update, Jun 09, 2026 and reboot the computer once and see if that works. 

         

        Let us know how it goes.

         

        ~Amal

          Amal Jaiswal
          Community Manager
          Amal JaiswalCommunity Manager
          Community Manager
          May 13, 2026

          Hi there 

           

          Hope you are doing well and thanks for reaching out. We are sorry for the trouble you are experiencing.

           

          Have you started experiencing this issue recently with an update? or was it occuring earlier as well? To get this logged with engineering and reproduced on our side, could you share a few details:

          • Acrobat version and track (Help > About Adobe Acrobat  e.g., 2024.x continuous, or the classic track build number)
          • Operating system and build (Windows 10/11, version)
          • NVDA version 
          • Whether the crash happens on any PDF or only specific ones  if you have a non-sensitive sample file that reliably reproduces it, that would be ideal. A simple tagged PDF with a few links is fine if that's enough to trigger it.
          • Approximate frequency  does it crash on the first focused link, or after navigating through several elements?
          • Crash logs, as described here https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/collect-logs-crash-freeze.html

          Also a small video recording of the steps you are taking and the issue as it occurs would be very helpful for further investigation.

           

          ~Amal

           

           

           

           

          A
          Ayanaru
          Participant
          May 19, 2026

          This happens consistently with all NVDA versions, it was investigated here and concluded as your (Adobe) issue. https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/17834
           

          Report has been submitted via the crash reprorter. System info is attached. This is happening for months.

           

            Amal Jaiswal
            Community Manager
            Amal JaiswalCommunity Manager
            Community Manager
            May 19, 2026

            Hi there, 

             

            Thanks for sharing the system information, however, to get this issue isolated for the fix we need the details as asked in the previous response. 

             

            Once we have the required information, we will get this issue checked with our development team.

             

            ~Amal

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