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Thread: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)
From: Jim Homme
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2019 7:53AM
Subject: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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==========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-technology-solutions
From: chagnon
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2019 9:49AM
Subject: Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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"Heading 3 no top line" is not one of the basic built-in styles in the MS
Word "normal" template. From what you describe, It appears to be a variation
based on the Heading 3 style.
It was created by someone in your organization and possibly added to your
office's normal template so that it automatically appears in all new
documents.
-Bevi
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Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2019 10:07AM
Subject: Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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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
From: Jim Homme
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2019 10:11AM
Subject: Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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Hi,
Another thing with JAWS is that it should say "list level," rather than "Outline level," when it refers to lists with levels. Word uses this terminology.
Jim
==========
Jim Homme
Digital Accessibility
Bender Consulting Services
412-787-8567
https://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-technology-solutions
From: Jonathan Cohn
Date: Thu, Jul 11 2019 1:57PM
Subject: Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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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 ADDRESS 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
>
>
>
From: Karlen Communications
Date: Fri, Jul 12 2019 5:34AM
Subject: Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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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
From: Jim Homme
Date: Wed, Jul 17 2019 12:58PM
Subject: Re: Word & PDF Style Question About Headings
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Hi,
The NVDA UIA stuff is experimental. I'm unsure what is coming in their next release.
On another topic, I noticed that when NVDA UIA is on, it speaks the word "Decorative" with graphics in Word. JAWS also does this. When we recently generated a PDF using Adobe Pro, all the graphics marked as decorative came over and did not show up for screen readers. When UIA was off in NVDA, the decorative graphics did not show up at all with NVDA.
So I guess that my wining about decorative being heard could be chocked up as a training issue, but I would want the behavior to be consistent with what we teach about web accessibility.
Thanks.
Jim
=========Jim Homme
Digital Accessibility
Bender Consulting Services
412-787-8567
https://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-technology-solutions