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Re: Read strike through text in pdf using jaws

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Apr 8, 2019 1:08PM

I do not know what the recognized best practice is. But I'm pretty sure
that strike-through text in a tagged PDF is not announced or
distinguished by JAWS in any way on its own, so you have to come up with
another method to communicate which text has been marked that way.

I have encountered cases where strike-out text is used to indicate text
that is deleted and redline (underlined red text) is used to indicate
new or inserted passages of text. In such cases, I have separated the
path (the line) that runs through the text and tagged it as a figure
separate from the actual text and then added alternative text to the
newly created figure.

For a single word, you could place the figure immediately before the
word in the tag tree and then use alternative text like "the following
word is marked as deleted" or "struck out".

For longer passages, you could split the path into two figures, and
place one figure before the struck out text and the second figure at the
end of the passage in the tag tree. Then you could use alternative text
similar to "the following two sentences are marked as deleted" on the
first figure and then use "end of deleted text" on the second figure.

A more accessible method in such cases would probably be to avoid using
strikeout text and to find another method of displaying text to be
changed. However, in practice, there are many advantages for sighted
readers to continue to use strikeout and redline text - not the least of
which is that it is a well-established textual convention and it is one
that is generated automatically by most word processors.

If your case relates to tracking changes in text, then you might also
consider supplying users with Microsoft Word versions of the file to
supplement the PDF version. Microsoft Word's track changes feature
apparently is pretty accessible and allows users multiple ways of
accessing the text.

I would be interested in hearing if others have a better method of
marking up strikeout text accessibly in a PDF.

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications

On 2019-04-08 14:35, soujanya atluri wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if we have any information about the policy or practice to
> read the strikethrough text in JAWS for Adobe PDF documents. Thanks!
>
> Regards,
> Soujanya Atluri