WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Which A.T. uses the R.O.?

for

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Aug 5, 2014 11:15AM

Hi Bevi,

- tools that do the PDF reading themselves tend to read the raw page description in a PDF file will end up reading stuff in the z "Order" (as reflected in the "Order" tool in Acrobat). These tools will present content in the same order as it would be rendered by the reflow tool (for example last time I checked a year or two ago, ZoomText did this). Also, on iOS all tools seem to do either do the PDF reading themselves or rely on the iOS built in PDF engine, both present content in the raw page description order. If only Apple started to get its act together and make use of the tagging structure in PDFs…
- tools that rely on the accessibility interfaces supported by Adobe Reader / Adobe Acrobat will follow the order of the tagging structure (definitely NVDA, but probably also JAWS). Speak aloud in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat and also "save as accessible text" in Acrobat will present content in this order.

Note that there are also some tools that ultimately just do OCR all the time, tools from Kurzweil tend to fall into that category.

Braille keyboards and printers will always have to rely on some piece of software - it's that software that is doing the PDF reading, and it depends on that software which order is being followed.


Olaf



On 5 Aug 2014, at 18:46, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Doing research and need to clarify which assistive technologies use a PDF's
> reading order (not the tag reading order but the blue Z "Order" tool in
> Acrobat or the Reflow utility).
>
>
>
> So far I've identified braille keyboards and braille printers. I believe
> some older versions of screen readers use it, too.
>
>
>
> Are there any other A.T. for blind and visually impaired users that use it?
>
> And are there any A.T. for users with mobility disabilities that use it?
>
>
>
> -Bevi Chagnon
>
> ---
>
> www.PubCom.com <http://www.pubcom.com/>; - Trainers, Consultants, Designers,
> Developers.
>
> Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
> Accessibility.
>
> Taka a Sec. 508 Class in 2014 - www. <http://www.Pubcom.com/classes>;
> Pubcom.com/classes
>
>
>
> > >