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Thread: PDF links and JAWS
Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)
From: Maki Wiering
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 9:24AM
Subject: PDF links and JAWS
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We have an interesting conundrum. Our document has table of contents links. In Acrobat 64-bit with JAWS 2021 or 2022, the links are announced correctly, but Enter does not activate the links. Nothing happens. And this is the situation for three expert JAWS users plus their clients.
The links do activate, however, in Acrobat 32-bit and with NVDA. We have gone to two big PDF remediator services and they have concluded it is a JAWS issue. But I can't find anyone else citing this issue online? What are we missing?
Right now, the links have the nested tags "Link" and "Link OBJR".
Any insight, things to try, would be so welcome.
Maki Wiering
From: Steve Green
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 9:53AM
Subject: Re: PDF links and JAWS
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We have seen some issues with tables of contents this week and I was wondering if something has got screwed in the latest version of Acrobat or possibly in Word's export process. In one document today, the TOC links work ok if you tab to them, but various weird things happen if you navigate to them using virtual cursor.
We had another document a couple of days ago, in which we had to construct a totally new TOC page from scratch and insert it into a document because the original was so deeply screwed that even untagging it and re-tagging it didn't work. The tags and their attributes in the new TOC page looked identical to those in the old TOC page, yet the links behaved correctly in the new one and not in the original.
Such is the joy of PDF remediation. Sometimes things are broken at a deeper level than we have tools to reach.
If you want to send me the PDF I'd be happy to take a look - I haven't suffered enough punishment today.
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
From: Philip Kiff
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 11:06AM
Subject: Re: PDF links and JAWS
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> Any insight, things to try, would be so welcome.
Something to try would be to nest each link in each TOCI inside a
Reference tag.
I haven't been remediating PDFs in the past couple weeks and haven't
noticed the issue that you and Steve have encountered. So this is just a
guess at something to check.
But a couple years ago I had issues with JAWS properly consuming Link
tags that were direct children of TOCI tags. Technically, I think it may
be that the TOCI tag is not supposed to have a Link tag as an immediate
child in the PDF spec even though Microsoft Word and many other common
PDF producers tag the TOC that way.
Phil.
Philip Kiff
D4K Communications
From: Philip Kiff
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 11:14AM
Subject: Re: PDF links and JAWS
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To clarify further, here's the tag structure I'm suggesting:
TOC
- TOCI
- - Reference
- - - Link
- - - - Link Obj
- - - - Text of Table of Contents entry
Phil.
On 2022-02-01 13:06, Philip Kiff wrote:
> > Any insight, things to try, would be so welcome.
>
> Something to try would be to nest each link in each TOCI inside a
> Reference tag.
>
> I haven't been remediating PDFs in the past couple weeks and haven't
> noticed the issue that you and Steve have encountered. So this is just
> a guess at something to check.
>
> But a couple years ago I had issues with JAWS properly consuming Link
> tags that were direct children of TOCI tags. Technically, I think it
> may be that the TOCI tag is not supposed to have a Link tag as an
> immediate child in the PDF spec even though Microsoft Word and many
> other common PDF producers tag the TOC that way.
>
> Phil.
>
> Philip Kiff
> D4K Communications
> > > >
From: Maki Wiering
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 11:38AM
Subject: Re: PDF links and JAWS
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Thank you, Steve, for your post. That is interesting that a document can pass certain remediation standards but still have serious accessibility roadblocks.
I would love to send it to you to take a look, but we'd have to have an NDA.
So we'll try rebuilding the ToC and see what happens.
Thank you!
Maki
Maki Wiering â Learning Design
Hadley
Hadley creates personalized learning opportunities that empower people with vision loss to thrive â at home, at work and in their communities.
From: Philip Kiff
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 12:06PM
Subject: Re: PDF links and JAWS
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On 2022-02-01 11:24, Maki Wiering wrote:
> Any insight, things to try, would be so welcome.
Assuming that the tag structure is correct, here are two more obscure
PDF remediation techniques to try.
1. Use the Edit PDF > Link edit function to check that Links are not
overlapping
Use the Edit PDF > Link edit function to review the actual link
annotation areas and ensure that there are no overlapping links or
duplicate links. Generated Table of Contents can sometimes result in two
links per TOCI, and one of those links may be broken or overlapping the
other, preventing it from activating for some reason. The Edit PDF >
Link function does not edit Link tag in the tag tree, but rather edits
the actual link annotation that appears as a highlighted rectangular
overlay when you enter the LInk edit mode.
2. Review the Content sidebar and ensure no invisible content is
obscuring the TOC
Some PDF producers generate all kinds of weird artifacts - Canva comes
to mind - and sometimes an invisible frame will be added that covers an
entire page. In rare cases, this frame can make it difficult to navigate
to link annotations even though the frame itself is not necessarily
marked as an annotation. These frames may contain background images and
so shouldn't be deleted without taking a close look at them.
Phil.
From: Laura Roberts
Date: Tue, Feb 01 2022 12:25PM
Subject: Re: PDF links and JAWS
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According to Dax Castro, this is a known bug introduced in the October 2021
update.
On Tue, Feb 1, 2022, 11:24 AM Maki Wiering < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> We have an interesting conundrum. Our document has table of contents
> links. In Acrobat 64-bit with JAWS 2021 or 2022, the links are announced
> correctly, but Enter does not activate the links. Nothing happens. And this
> is the situation for three expert JAWS users plus their clients.
>
> The links do activate, however, in Acrobat 32-bit and with NVDA. We have
> gone to two big PDF remediator services and they have concluded it is a
> JAWS issue. But I can't find anyone else citing this issue online? What are
> we missing?
>
> Right now, the links have the nested tags "Link" and "Link OBJR".
>
> Any insight, things to try, would be so welcome.
>
> Maki Wiering
>
> > > > >