Why do accessible PDF documents made via InDesign of over 50 or so pages fail to read properly with JAWs and NVDA?

[adamd61503058]

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I work for a charity in the UK for the Blind, which is why I need this to work.

This is the problem, which I have explained to Adobe, but have received answers such as "you can export as many pages as you like", and "This is a 3rd Party Application problem". Here's an extract of the email I recently sent back to Adobe Support:

I can export any number of pages for Print or any other format from InDesign to Acrobat, the issue is that when the PDF is converted to an Accessible PDF (APDF), it passes all the accessibility criteria, but then fails to be read correctly by Accessibility Reader Apps.

I have now tried several files on 2 Reader platforms, JAWs and NVDA, the same problems arise on both systems.

The Reader Apps normally start by reading out how many headlines and links a document has; this aspect of these over 50 page APDF documents fails to work; the 'Readers’ then get stuck at the end of each page and the the APDF does not scroll down when used via the Readers.

Clearly this is a huge problem for blind users as they could easily think that it is a single page document, with "one Heading and no links” as they are told by the Readers.

The same documents work perfectly well if the document is cut down to under 50 pages.

When I previously spoke to an Adobe contact it was suggested that there maybe an issue with the export from InDesign to Acrobat which was causing this.

I am not so sure it is an issue with the 3rd Party applications, and that it is an issue with either Acrobat, InDesign, or a combination of both.

We produce many documents like these every week and it is important that we can serve our members, customers, and clients with documents that they can access.

[olafdruemmer · Accepted solution]

The users of screenreaders will have to do the following:

in Adobe Acrobat Reader/Adobe Acrobat, go to "Preferences", "Reading" pane, "Screen Reader Options" group: set "Page vs. Document" popup to "Entire document", or adjust "Minimum number of pages in a large document" to a value higher than 50, such that it is greater or equal to the max. number of pages expected in the largest document intendede for reading.

HTH>

Olaf

[adamd61503058]

So simple, yet I've been trying to get this answer from Adobe for weeks, and have been told all sorts of things.

Brilliant works perfectly.

thank you very much.