Conversion to PDF ignores reading order/decorative tagging in PPT

Hi everyone,

I'm absolutely flummoxed and need guidance and advice. My department has a large PowerPoint file that acts as a template. There are over sixty "creative" slides that can be used and mixed-matched as a basis for a training presentation. It is very graphical with shapes behind text boxes, icons, and callout numbers that consist of circles with the number text embedded in them. I'm trying to prepare this template for accessibility when output to PDF so that only the text boxes and the relevant screenshots of our software product, tagged with alt text, are read by screen readers, and all of the shapes (boxes behind text), non-meaningful icons, and callout numbers are marked as decorative so they can be ignored by screen readers. 

The problem I'm encountering is that, depending on how things are layered, some text boxes that should be read are being ignored by the screen reader, and some things that are marked as decorative are being read.

In the attached example, only the title, the subtitle, and the five content text boxes are selected in the PowerPoint reading order panel. Everything else has been marked as decorative. Grouped objects were marked as decorative before grouping, and then the group itself was marked as decorative. (I have found that this is necessary in order for them to be ignored by the screen reader in PDF.)

However, when I output to PDF, only five of the seven checkmarked items are being read by the screen reader. This is the order being read:

1. Title
2. Sub-title
5. Role-based users heading text box
6. The single bullet and note under that heading
7. Tip text box in the upper-right

In other words, items 3 and 4--the Administrators heading text box and the text box with the two bullets below it--are being completely skipped over by the screen reader. When I look at the Reading Order in Adobe Acrobat Pro, I find that the conversion to PDF failed to tag those two text boxes. Instead, it tagged a whole bunch of other things that were marked as decorative in PPT and should be ignored by the screen reader. (Thankfully, those things aren't actually being read; they're just tagged.)

I'm finding that how the layers in PowerPoint are organized matters. If decorative objects are located above text boxes in the PPT reading order panel/list (because they are lower layers on the slide), those text boxes are often ignored in the PDF output. I've also found that it's best to try to organize all of the checkmarked items to be read so that they are consecutive in the list and are not separated by a bunch of decorative objects, as in my example. However, if I move the Title and Subtitle down in the list so they're positioned just above reading order item #3 (TextBox 18: ADMINISTRATORS), they are ignored entirely when the PDF is read because they are the first two text boxes below those decorative objects. If I try to move reading order items #3 through #7 up so they're positioned just below #1 and #2, they end up behind those decorative objects; those text boxes must be positioned on the upper layers of the slide, which means they are positioned further down in the reading order panel. I don't fully understand why items #3 and 4 are not being properly tagged in the PDF, just because they have decorative objects nearby.

On some of my other slides (no pictures attached), there are little callout circles with embedded numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) next to certain parts of a screenshot. Even though I have those circles marked as decorative because numbers, alone, are meaningless and the associated on-slide text describes those areas better, the screen reader is reading those numbered circles when the slides are output to PDF.

It's absurd to me that Microsoft has designed the accessibility reading order to rely so heavily on layers, and that Adobe does not seem to follow the specified reading order and decorative tagging when generating the PDF. I'm at my wit's end and don't know how to prevent these issues in the first place, or if there's a way to prevent them. These seem like bugs, not design features.

I know there are probably ways to manually fix issues like this in Adobe Acrobat Pro, but dozens of PowerPoint presentations based on this template are created regularly by a small army of trainers, and there's just little ol' me. With their tight training schedules, they aren't going to have time to fix these issues on their own, and I can't possibly fix so many PowerPoint presentations in time for their webinars.

The only solution I can think of is to move as many non-meaningful graphical objects as possible, like boundary boxes and icons, to the master layouts and allow only the text boxes, screenshots, and other meaningful elements on the slide itself. This will require a ridiculous number of master layouts, though, and it still doesn't fix the problem with the little callout circles with numbers though. Those have to be on the slide because they're positioned on top of meaningful screenshots.

Does anyone have any other thoughts, advice, or guidance? Am I doing something glaringly wrong that, if done right, would fix these issues?

I appreciate any help. Thank you!

Lisa