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Re: PDF Text Reading Weird w/ Screen Reader

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Sep 28, 2017 6:15AM

On 2017-09-26 11:39 AM, Carly Gerard wrote:
> [....] I'm working on making an accessible PDF, but after adjusting tags and running the checker, my coworker and I found the text to read weirdly, like letters in words would separate from each other. For example, "Click your name in uppe r right hand c orner and s elect 'Manage Your Account Information- from dropdown m enu..."
My guess is that this is caused by extraneous p tags being inserted in
the middle of words by whatever software generated the PDF to being
with. The screen reader will usually pause at the end of each p tag.
This can be fixed by using the "Touch Up Reading Order" tool in Acrobat
Pro by simply selecting the troublesome words or groups of words as a
single phrase all at once and then clicking "Text".

If that doesn't work, then my next guess would be that the actual
content contains unwanted spaces or hidden paths or containers that
somehow got stuck in between the letters in the content tree. This can
happen if your text has underlining, or shading, for example. You can
try to fix this by viewing the content manually and cutting and pasting
or dragging individual letters or words into a single container in the
order you want the text to be read with the correct spaces in the
correct order. You may have to re-tag the text using the Touch Up
Reading Order tool after you do this. This kind of manual adjustment of
the actual content can be finnicky and tricky, and changes are often
non-reversible, so be careful to save regularly if you attempt to make
such changes.

Phil.