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Re: PDFs and NVDA

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Aug 22, 2011 6:18AM

The recommended "reading order" is to infer the reading order from the
document. This is what Acrobat or Reader should be set at by default in the
Reading category of the Preferences. Tab Order only comes into play for
forms or PDF documents with links. This is the only time we have the option
to "Tab" through content and the content being tabbed through are the form
controls and the links not the "regular text" of the document. Any document
without links or form controls we use standard navigation/reading keyboard
commands for moving through documents.

The other two options, left to right, top to bottom and the raw print
stream are used for legacy or untagged PDF documents and are meant to be an
option in getting some kind of sense out of the document when the
recommended reading order doesn't work with the PDF. These are options even
if the PDF is tagged but not tagged properly. Duff is correct in that Tags
are what makes a PDF accessible and these other two options are considered
to be last resorts when the document is not tagged...or as I've said, not
tagged correctly.

I have NVDA and opened a PDF tagged from Word in Acrobat 9. When I press H
NVDA does move from heading to heading in the document. I couldn't find
reference to the keyboard command to list headings in NVDA...am a JAWS user.
Can you send the keyboard command and I'll see if it works with my
documents? My first thought was that NVDA didn't have this feature for PDF
documents which is why you got an empty list or no list at all. I did try to
find a list of the keyboard commands for NVDA but the WebAIM link which
seems to be the best match to the search results won't open and all other
references don't mention listing headings as a feature of NVDA. Will keep
trying but if you have the keyboard command that would be helpful.

Cheers, Karen