Read Out Loud Not Following Read Order; Reading Empty Pages in Full

[G867]

I'm currently having an incredibly frustrating issue with Adobe Acrobat.

I work for a small ad agency and one of our clients legally requires PDF's to be ADA-compliant, which means they need to read out loud properly.

However, I have all of the sudden run into an issue where Acrobat outright refuses to follow the reading order. On top of this, even if I clear the page structure from all pages, it just reads anyway instead of giving the usual "Warning: empty page" notice.

Even if I highlight everything correctly for the reading order, Acrobat simply ignores it and read whatever it wants. What's baffling is that I've made dozens of documents ADA-compliant before and this wasn't happening. Now, all of the sudden, it is.

I'm pulling my hair out trying to find a way around this. Someone please help.

[S S.]

Hi @G867,

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for your experience with Acrobat.

Have you checked the thread with an issue similar to yours: Solved: PDF page and reading says Warning, empty page?

If this doesn't help, I suggest checking the language set for your PC for text-to-speech and if it is the same as the language for the document ( These can be minor changes that might tweak the accessibility settings).

Also, you may try repairing the installation by going to Help-> Repair Installation.

Another suggestion I would suggest is, checking if the Reading Order is checked to be overridden. You may refer to the screenshot for reference:

Let me know if this helps.

-Souvik.

[G867]

None of the above changed any of the behavior of Read Out Loud. Even a clean reinstall didn't change anything.

I can literally go into Edit PDF and delete all the text elements from a page and it will still read things that aren't there.

[S S.]

Hi @G867,

Thank you for the response.

You may try resetting the preferences of the application to default: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/how-to-reset-acrobat-preference-settings-to-defau....

Also, we would like to have some more information on this:

1. The Operating System and the version you are using;

2. The Application version you are using;

3. A screen recording of the event for better investigation.

4. A sample file for us to try and reproduce the issue at our end.

Also, if resetting the application preferences does not work, you may want to try running the application on a new user account with complete Admin Rights (Windows) or Root User (Mac).

Let me know if this helps.

-Souvik.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Just a small, but critical, clarification.

The ADA — Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 — does not cover PDFs or any form of digital information. The ADA was specifically was designed to:

1. Prevent discrimination in employment (Title  1),
2. Prevent discrimination in access to state and local government services (Title 2), and
3. Provide physical accommodations for those with disabilities in public facilities (Title 3, barrier-free physical access).

See https://www.ada.gov/2010_regs.htm for details about ADA.

Accessibility of digital information is covered by another US law, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which was signed into law 8 years later in 1998.

There are several other laws that provide for equal access to education, housing, and more: See a complete list of companion and complimentary civil rights laws at https://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm 

The ADA does not rule them all: it's just one of 12 individual laws that address these civil rights issues.

If you want accessible digital information, the law is Sec. 508. You're making a Section-508-compliant PDF, not an ADA-compliant PDF.

When we mis-speak and use incorrect terms, we end up diluting the law and the civil rights protections it provides.

[G867]

I know this is a very delayed response but I appreciate the clarification as someone who always likes to have the correct information.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Acrobat's Read Aloud utility is not a fully compliant text-to-speech reader, nor is it compliant with the PDF/UA-1 accessibility standard.

It was created 20+ years ago, before we had accessibility standards for PDFs (PDF/UA-1 was first released in 2012, about 12 years later). So it's not surprising that it doesn't recognize the tag tree or its reading order. And it barely reads the architectural Order, too.

So much depends upon how the original source file was created and exported to PDF.

No one recommends using Read Aloud for testing accessibility of PDFs. It's a worthless piece of antiquated software, truly the worst text-to-speech program on the market.

Instead, test with a fully PDF/UA-1 compliant screen reader, such as JAWS or NVDA (which is free).

[G867]

So much depends upon how the original source file was created and exported to PDF.

This helped tremendously. I've re-examined how I prepare PDF's from InDesign and learned more about setting accessibility options from within InDesign, which are then coded into the PDF.