How do I disable accessibility features???

[#1]

I'm using Acrobat Standard 8.1.2. I made a change to the program and I can't undo it. It started when I installed voice recognition for Microsoft Word. Then, the next time I started Acrobat, it brought up the Accessibility Setup Assistant. I didn't really know what was going on. Now, whenever I pull up a new document, I get a window that says "Content Preparation Progress". In the window, it says "Please wait while the document is being prepared for" (it doesn't say for WHAT). Then if I open up a PDF of something I scanned, I get a window called "Scanned Page Alert". The message is "This page contains only an image of a scanned page. There are no text characters. Would you like to run character analysis to try to make the text on this page accessible?" There's a box I can check that says "Do not show again", and I can click that I guess. The problem is, Adobe seems to want to make every document I open accessible, and I just don't need that. I've noticed that on PDF's made with text, the text now appears very bland (probably because it's been made "accessible". And I can't figure out how to undo what I did. Please help!!!

[#2]

I'm using Acrobat Standard 8.1.2. I made a change to the program and I can't undo it. It started when I installed voice recognition for Microsoft Word. Then, the next time I started Acrobat, it brought up the Accessibility Setup Assistant. I didn't really know what was going on. Now, whenever I pull up a new document, I get a window that says "Content Preparation Progress". In the window, it says "Please wait while the document is being prepared for" (it doesn't say for WHAT). Then if I open up a PDF of something I scanned, I get a window called "Scanned Page Alert". The message is "This page contains only an image of a scanned page. There are no text characters. Would you like to run character analysis to try to make the text on this page accessible?" There's a box I can check that says "Do not show again", and I can click that I guess. The problem is, Adobe seems to want to make every document I open accessible, and I just don't need that. I've noticed that on PDF's made with text, the text now appears very bland (probably because it's been made "accessible". And I can't figure out how to undo what I did. Please help!!!

[#3]

I'm going to second this one. After a recent update to Reader 8.1.2 I have the same problem. This was never an issue before. Now every time I open a PDF, I get inundated with dialog after dialog of accessibility settings!

This is a serious hindrance, and like Jay, I just want to completely disable the feature and never have to deal with it again.

Can anybody shed any light on this at all?

[#4]

check the reading and accessibility preferences in Acrobat.

[#5]

This is really frustrating. There is NO option to disable the feature in the Accessibility portion of Acrobat 8.1.2 preferences. These are the top tier choices:

- Replace Document Colors
- Always use Page Layout Style... (4 options for style)
- Always use Zoom Setting... (19 options for zoom)
- Use document structure for tab order when no explicit tab order is specified
- Always display the keyboard selection cursor

No DISABLE button in there!

Now, the Reading prefs are:

- Reading Order (3 options for order)
- Override the reading order in tagged documents
- Page vs Document (3 options for what to read)
- Minimum number of page in a large document (specify)
- Confirm before tagging documents
- Volume (1-10)
- Use default voice
- Voice (options for voice)
- Use default speech attributes
- Pitch (1-10)
- Words per minute (specify)
- Read form fields

No DISABLE button in there either!

So please, I think that many of us have Googled for an answer and the best responses are usually in the form of "look at the preferences for Accessibility." I'm not saying that this is bad advice, but there is just no option for disabling the feature.

Could someone from Adobe PLEASE chime in and just say once and for all "you can't disable this" or "you can and this is how?"

PLEASE!?!?!?!?!?

[#6]

Exactly right, Keith! And I did something funky when that dialog box first came up (I think I hit "use default preferences") and after that, every PDF I opened wound up being converted to "accessible" format, usually changing the fonts of the text to a really bland one. And I couldn't find a way to undo what I did. The only thing I could do was reinstall Acrobat, which I did. Now when those dialog boxes come up, I just hit "Cancel" every time, but it's annoying to have to do that EVERY time I open a PDF.

Since this didn't happen when I was working with XP, I think it might be a Vista thing. The problem only happens when I have Speech Recognition open - when I don't, the PDF's open normally.

[#7]

Maybe the stuff under the Reading, not Accessibility, panel is more
relevant. Dunno.

Aandi Inston

[#8]

right looked into this a bit more.
The content preparation message indicates Acrobat has detected assistive technology on the machine, like a screen reader or indeed speech recognition software. Acrobat/reader is preparing the document for this, rightly or wrongly.

Unfortunately you can't disable it via an Acrobat preference setting, but you can decrease the frequency. Edit>preferences:reading:Screen Reader options:Only read the currently visible pages.

You can disable the plugin responsible for this however,
Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat\plug_ins
and rename either accessibility.api or readoutloud.api to accessibility.old or readoutloud.old resp.

Obviously this means you lose the other accessibility/read out loud features, but will prevent the content preparation message.

[#9]

What if you can't open Acrobat Reader? I installed a screen reader for testing purposes, and now Acrobat Reader only operates in voice-over mode so I can't access controls to return to print mode.

[#10]

Opening large files became impossible because of this new and pretty useless to most accessability feature. Renaming api to api_old did the trick. Result: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\plug_ins\Accessibility.api_OLD