Image and Text on the same line, the Alt Text gets read but the text is not read

Report · Feb 10, 2025

I am striving to make a template for a newsletter that is accessible.

I am able to get it to work within LibreOffice Writer / Word etc.. but when the file is saved as a PDF, is where the issue begins. OK so a little background info :

1) There is an image that is in the same line as a Heading/Title There is alt text in the image properties, the image wrap is set to AFTER which means the image is on the left and the text is on the right.

2) The file was exported from Libre Office Writer using the Export PDF with the

FULLY Tagged box checked AND the PDF/UA box also checked.

3) this is LibreOffice version :
Version: 24.8.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community

Build ID: bb3cfa12c7b1bf994ecc5649a80400d06cd71002

CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (10.0 build 19045); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win

Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US

Calc: CL threaded

The screen reader is NVDA - :

Version: 24.8.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community

Build ID: bb3cfa12c7b1bf994ecc5649a80400d06cd71002

CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (10.0 build 19045); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win

Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US

Calc: CL threaded

ADOBE Info :

2024.005.20399 64 bit

With all that said, when accessing the Document inside of Adobe Acrobat (Pro)
the screen reader will read the ALT TEXT from the image.. and continue to read the alt text over even if I begin by either hovering over, clicking or highlighting the text that comes after it. Again, it reads normally within Libre office for both Image AND text. its just not working inside of acrobat ( or in a browser with an acrobat plugin ).

Any assistance/ideas would be appreciated. Thank you !

Report · Mar 08, 2025

@BrBearOFS my students and I were just talking about accessibility in design, and screen readers are not all the same. Because you created the newsletter in LibreOffice, the screen reader will read it correctly. But once, you bring it over to Acrobat, Acrobat's screen reader has its own interpretation of the tagging structure or reading order— which is leading to unexpected behavior compared to LibreOffice screen readers.

Is there a work-around? Yes, but it's also time consuming as then you need to manual adjust the tagging in Acrobat for every time you create a newsletter. Have you tried to see if Microsoft 365 have better results if you export the newsletter PDF and open in Acrobat?