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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