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Re: Incorrect reading behaviour by JAWS and NVDA for the samePPT slide.

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From: Steve Green
Date: Mar 10, 2023 10:22AM

PowerPoint has two different reading orders, so you need to specify which one you are talking about. The Selection Pane controls the reading order for the PowerPoint file. There is also a Reading Order Pane, which you access via Review > Check Accessibility. This controls the reading order in PDFs created from the PowerPoint file.

According to some notes I made a year or so ago, the reading order you get in the PDF is not necessarily the order you specified. Shapes, images, titles and subtitles are always read before any text. I have not tested this again recently.

When using JAWS and NVDA to read the PowerPoint slides, they behave exactly the same when I use the Selection Pane to change the reading order. The Reading Order Pane that I mentioned above has no effect when reading the PowerPoint slides.

When reading the slides in PowerPoint's Normal view, decorative images have to be announced by screen readers because you are in editing mode and you may want to change some property of the image. If the image was not announced, how could you find it? Decorative images are not announced in Reading View.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Nibin Mathew (SO/OPM33-IN) via WebAIM-Forum
Sent: 09 March 2023 09:03
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Cc: Nibin Mathew (SO/OPM33-IN) < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Incorrect reading behaviour by JAWS and NVDA for the same PPT slide.

Hello all,
Thanks much for the useful resources and recommendations as reply to my PPT related query last week.

One of the unexpected behaviours I have observed from the PPT accessibility check and fix, there are differences in reading the slide content order by JAWS and NVDA after making changes on the reading order. How does it happen that both the screen readers are fetching data through the same accessibility API right? Should I change any option or any settings in PPT or Screen reader to fix it?
Also, while reading the slide using JAWS, it is even announcing that the decorative images present little gibberish which are already marked as decorative. which may be an annoying experience.

Do any of you have a similar experience on PPT?
What are the possible ways to fix it?

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Mathew Nibin

Design Factory (SO/OPM33-IN)
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