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From: Claire Forbes
Date: Fri, Dec 29 2023 9:57AM
Subject: PowerPoint presentation_NVDA
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Hello everyone,
Is there a method that I'm missing to get NVDA to read a PowerPoint presentation?
I've reviewed the slide deck to ensure it meets accessibility standards and everything is in good reading order, but when I open NVDA it only reads the slide titles. Am I missing a "trick"/keyboard shortcut or does this mean there's a failure in compliance somewhere?

Thank you!
Claire

From: Steve Green
Date: Fri, Dec 29 2023 5:37PM
Subject: Re: PowerPoint presentation_NVDA
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I have recently been testing some PowerPoint templates and can confirm that NVDA does not read some content in Slideshow view. As far as I can tell, it's an NVDA bug and there's nothing you can do about it.



I have not yet finished my testing, but so far the following appear to be true:



* JAWS reads footer content in the Slide Master, but NVDA does not. Is it possible that this is where you have put all your content?
* If a slide contains a title, JAWS announces the text once as the title and again as a level 1 heading, usually with other content between the two instances. NVDA does not announce the first instance. It announces the second instance, but not as a heading.
* If a paragraph contains a link, JAWS reads the text and link the same as it does in a web page. NVDA reads the paragraph as if it didn't contain a link. If you tab to the link, NVDA does not say anything when it receives focus, but the link can be operated by pressing the Enter key (although you would not know to do so).
* NVDA reads entire sentences, no matter how long they are. It ignores the setting that causes web pages and PDFs to be read in fixed-size chunks.



There are a lot of variables, so I expect there are other differences between JAWS and NVDA. For instance, the way that Slide Masters and Layouts are used will probably make a difference and I expect the NVDA version will make a difference. I am using version 2023.2. Also, the PowerPoint version will make a difference – I am using Office 365 so I have the latest version, but older versions like 2016 or 2019 may well behave differently.



This is all on top of a load of other weirdnesses that make PowerPoint an absolute nightmare to work with. And it doesn't help that almost everything written about creating accessible PowerPoint files is incorrect and incomplete.



Exporting as PDF

If possible, I recommend exporting the slideshow as a PDF and distributing that instead of the PowerPoint file. Bizarrely, this is more accessible, less buggy and provides a far more consistent behaviour with different screen readers. And if you have Acrobat, you can fix things that cannot be fixed in PowerPoint itself.



Note that PowerPoint's File > Save As > PDF feature creates a substantially different PDF than the File > Save As Adobe PDF feature (aka PDFMaker) that you will have if Acrobat is installed (in which case it is also on the Ribbon at Acrobat > Create PDF). My testing is not complete, but last week PDFMaker was ignoring the reading order I set in PowerPoint and I don't yet know what is controlling the reading order.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd