Reading Order Tool and Highlighting Content is Inaccessible to Screen Reader Users
Bug: The Reading Order Tool, and / or Highlighting content in a PDF document for tagging is inaccessible.
Steps to reproduce:
1. Using Acrobat Pro DC 2019 under Windows 7 / 8 / 10, open an untagged PDF for which you do not have the source file.
2. Preferably, launch a screen reader such as NVDA (http://www.nvaccess.org) or JAWS 2019 (www.freedomscientific.com)
3. Attempt to begin tagging portions of the document. For most people, this is done using the reading order tool found in the accessibility tools.
4. Once in the reading order tool, attempt to select any type of content. This can be text, a figure, a list item, a table cell etc. Note: DO NOT USE THE MOUSE TO HIGHLIGHT CONTENT. Screen reader users are unable to use the mouse, so keyboard commands are necessary in order for this process to be accessible for everyone.
5. Notice that there are no keyboard commands to highlight content. I have been unable to successfully highlight content using strictly the keyboard.
Note that I am using the reading order tool as an example, because it seems to be the quickest way to highlight content and then tag it all in one place. If there are alternative ways to highlight content that are fully keyboard accessible, please let me know about these alternative methods. I have created a forum post discussing these accessibility pitfalls. Please refer to https://forums.adobe.com/message/10892018#10892018 for the brief discussion about these issues.
Environment: Windows 10, NVDA 2018.4.1 and JAWS 2019, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2019
Cory Samaha
shared this idea
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Cory Samaha
commented
Thank you for the reply, Rachit. Please keep me updated either here or on the forum post I created linked above as to the status of this issue.
Thank you again,
Cory