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NVDA (Windows) — free
JAWS (Windows) — paid
Testing for PDF accessibility on a Mac using VoiceOver (the built-in screen reader), or on mobile devices, is not the best idea. Unfortunately, both VoiceOver and built-in mobile screen readers have limits when it comes to PDFs. Your best bet is to use either NVDA or JAWS on Windows.
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Document Titles should always be read first by the screen reader when the document is open. It is also the first piece of information info displayed in search engine results, so it is . Document Titles are very important to include in any project. To add a document title,
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Once your document is tagged, you need to establish a Reading Order. This shows the order in which your content will be read by a screen reader. The Reading Order also refers to the Screen Reader Reading Order and the Content Reflow Reading Order. The Screen Reader Reading Order is the order in which content will be read by a screen reader like NVDA. The Content Reflow Reading order is the order in which the content will be presented when it is set to Reflow View. That is organized in the Order Pane and is much harder to control. This is because moving items around in the Order Pane impacts the order of tags in the Tags Pane.
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When you move items around in the Order Pane, the tags in the Tag Pane move correspondingly. Sometimes, when objects are moved, their tags may be moved into the wrong place.
When you change the order of items in the Order Pane, the visual stacking order of items also changes. You might end up with an object that should be in front of another object but ends up behind it, causing . This will cause layout problems. You’ll need to fix the order.
The numbering you see in the Order Pane does not relate to the screen reader reading order. Instead, it shows the visual stacking order of different content layers. So don’t be misled by these numbers when you’re checking for screen reader reading order.
In some cases, it's not possible to manage the reading and display order of multiple tags. This is the case for tags that are next to each other from the Order Pane. If this happens, you’ll need to go into the Tags Pane to make fixes.
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Analyze the types of content in the document and how they should be presented. For example:
A heading, even if positioned placed in the middle or at the bottom of a page, must be read before its content.
If long quotes are used, have the screen reader read the speaker name first. That way, users know who the quote is from.
When content refers to footnotes at the bottom of the page, in some cases, you should have the footnotes them read immediately following their content.
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When manually tagging, create the tags in the order in which you expect the content to be. This will minimize any tag rearranging. But if you need to move tags around, just drag and drop them in the Tags Pane.
Section 3.
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10: Tab Order
When a PDF document has documents have links or form fields, you must define the order in which a user will go tabs through itthem. To make this happen:
Open the Page Thumbnails Pane.
Select all of the thumbnails in the Navigation Pane (Control + Click).
Right-click one of the thumbnails and select Page Properties.
On the Tab Order tab, select Use Document Structure, click OK.
Section 3.
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11: Cleaning Up Unmarked Content
When you are finished tagging the document, be sure to check that everything is tagged. To be sure:
Open the Tags Pane.
Open the Options Menu.
Click Find.
In the Drop-down menu, select Unmarked Content.
Select the options for Search Document.
Click Find.
Acrobat will show you an untagged item with a pink border around it.
Click Next in the Dialogue Box to see each unmarked content item one at a time.
Tag the items. Repeat the process for the rest of the document.
Section 3.
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12: Deleting Empty Tags
You should also delete all empty tags. If you want to do this automatically, Acrobat can only delete them all at once. If you want to do it one by one, you’ll need to do this manually in the tag tree. But be careful if you use the auto feature. Not all empty tags should be empty; there might be content that needs to go in there. To delete empty tags,
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