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Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Jul 12, 2019 5:34AM

When I contacted Microsoft in 2003 they had no idea why JAWS wasn't identifying the custom Headings because they were based on existing Heading Styles. I'll reach out to them again to see if they have any clues. My understanding at the time was that this was a screen reader issue.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Jonathan Cohn
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2019 3:57 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Word & PDF Style Question About Headings

Is this a screen reader issue or a Word API issue? I don't know enough about how Word and current screen readers communicate such information, but it must be either from Visual Basic clues or UIA. I believe NVDA 2019 release notes mention something about using UIA for Word but I can't look at the specifics and I am not sure I understand enough Python if I could. But the real question I see here is:
Is Word not providing appropriate heading context to the screen readers, or are the screen readers ignoring this information.
> Jul 11, 2019, at 12:07 PM, Karlen Communications < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> First, JAWS won't announce or list custom Headings. We've been
> complaining about this lack of support since 2003. Even if you base a
> Heading 1A or in your case a Heading 3 No Top line based on a Heading
> 3, JAWS won't see it as a Heading. It will appear in the TOC and in
> the Navigation Pane...anywhere else but when you are going through the
> document either reading using JAWS or trying to get a list of Headings.
>
> I just checked with JAWS and I can use JawsKey + F to get the font
> information and it tells me that Heading 1A is outline level 1. I
> renamed Heading 1A to Orange Text and using the same keyboard command
> I get the name of the Style and the outline level. However, as I'm
> reading the document, there is no indication from JAWS that I am on a
> Heading despite the text being in the Navigation Pane at its correct
> placement and despite being able to use References, Table of Contents
> to generate an accurate Table of Contents.
>
> Again, we've been asking for this support since 2003. Looks like NVDA
> does not support custom Headings either.
>
> It should convert to H3 when the document is converted to tagged PDF
> if the custom Heading is based on an existing Heading. Heading 3 No
> Top Line is a custom Heading. I've not ever seen it in the list of Styles for Word..
>
> Cheers, Karen
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> Jim Homme
> Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2019 9:54 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: [WebAIM] Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
>
> ==========Hi,
> I would love to be able to predict what will happen when working with
> this, to relieve stress. I'm glad I checked before I told someone to
> do a bunch of work they ended up not having to do. I almost told
> someone to change a lot of items in Word, but we noticed that they
> looked good to NVDA, when we created the PDF. Here is what happened.
>
>
> * In Word, there is a style whose name is "Heading 3 no top line." As of
> this writing, I'm unsure if this is a built-in style, or if someone
> here created it. I had NVDA set to report style names and headings,
> because I wanted to catch paragraphs that looked to me like normal
> paragraphs that should be turned into built-in heading styles. When I
> also turned on the NVDA feature that reports headings, I noticed that
> for the styles I normally see in Word whose names are "Heading 1,"
> "Heading 2," "Heading 3," and so forth, NVDA reported the style names
> and the heading and level. For example, it said "Style Heading3 heading 3."
> For the style in question, NVDA said "Heading 3 no top line," which
> seemed to indicate that NVDA did not realize that this style was meant
> to be a heading level 3. I then checked the properties for the
> paragraph after I located one of these items. I noticed that the
> outline level was 3. I also noticed that the style in question is based on the built-in Heading 3 style.
> This seems to indicate that NVDA reports heading level based on style
> names, rather than outline level.
>
> Now, finally, the question. Cjould this be an NVDA bug, or exactly
> what am I looking at here?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jim
>
>
> Jim Homme
> Digital Accessibility
> Bender Consulting Services
> 412-787-8567
> https://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-techn
> ology-
> solutions
>
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