[Athen] Question about screen readers and PDFs

[Walton, Vicki]

This is a question for screen reader users. It is also a question for those who do PDF remediation.

We are getting close to getting a new website so we are touching a lot of PDFs. Some are forms and others are just text.  The forms are problematic. It's easy enough to create the form fields but when we go to tag them it throws the reading order off. Sometimes we can move the order and other times one will get stuck and won't move no matter what we do. And, with fillable tables it is a completely different story after they get tagged.  They can completely disrupt the reading order and make it difficult to rearrange.

We use both NVDA and JAWS to test our documents.  Our staff are all sighted users. Both programs work in a PDF differently. At times, we use the arrow key to navigate into a form field and other times the tab key. This is not consistent and one program will go into the form field with an arrow key but not the tab key and vice versa.

How do we get this to be consistent? Is this possible?

Our JAWS version is 2019 and indicates we have landed in a form field by a sound.  NVDA, while navigating this same PDF skips over the form fields all together.  If we force going into the form field mode with NVDA, there is a sound. But, if it skips right over it, how does the screen reader user know there is even a fillable form field that was missed?

My question is, (and I realize I may not be very clear) even though we understand the navigation process of each program, how do you navigate a fillable form PDF versus a text PDF? Tab or arrow keys? Which navigation tool, for the most part, lands in the form field the most?  Is there even a real answer to this?

We want to do right by our screen reader users but this process is not a perfect science. After tagging a PDF, it works one time but does not work the next. Not all PDFs are created equal, that's for sure.

I utilize Karen McCall's tutorials a lot. She is a huge help yet we are not naturally screen reader users so we need any help we can get.

Any help and advice is so appreciated.


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Vicki Walton
Assistive Technology Center
509.542.4428, or ext. 2428
2600 N. 20th Ave., Pasco, WA 99301
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