That was awesome! ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Ferrin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 4:31 PM Subject: [jaws-users] PDF files from our research department
Yes Virginia we do have a research department, read on for proof. From FS directly. *** Hi Dave Information on PDF files and Adobe Reader 7.0 with JAWS Often we receive questions from customers as to why one particular PDF (Portable Document Format) file or another does not read well with JAWS. There can be many reasons for this. Did you know you can do some basic investigation of the PDF file on your own to determine some of these reasons? In this article we'll show you how to check a PDF file for basic accessibility and readability. Also, we'll provide some tips to make reading PDF files easier. Versions of Adobe Reader The Accessibility Setup Assistant Tags in PDF Files Reading Untagged Documents Accessibility Quick Check for PDF Files Scanned Images as PDF Document Properties Forms Mode in PDF Documents with JAWS Guide to Adobe Reader for Users with Disabilities Versions of Adobe Reader The most recent version of Adobe Reader at the time of this writing is version 7.0. If you do not have this version you can download Adobe Reader 7 from Adobe's Web site. Make sure you download the full version rather than the basic version. The full version includes accessibility features that help ensure that recipients who use screen readers have access to all available functions for Adobe Reader. Back to Top from the Versions of Adobe Reader section The Accessibility Setup Assistant When you first start Adobe Reader 7 and JAWS or MAGic are running, an Accessibility Setup Assistant dialog box opens and walks you through some simple steps to optimize Adobe Reader for your adaptive software. If you miss this dialog the first time you start Adobe Reader 7 you can open it from the Help menu. Initial Page of the Accessibility Setup Assistant In this initial dialog there is a group of three radio buttons and an optional button to "Use recommended settings and skip setup." Pressing the optional button will bypass any other dialogs and apply the recommended settings for whichever radio button you choose. The three radio button choices are: List of 3 items . Set options for screen readers . Set options for screen magnifiers . Set all accessibility options (This one is checked initially.) list end If you want to have the ability to pick and choose from among the options for any of the given radio buttons then press SPACEBAR on the "Next" button and not on the "Use Recommended Settings" button. The individual choices include the following: Second Page of the Accessibility Setup Assistant List of 4 items . Use high contrast colors for document text . Disable text smoothing . Default display zoom level (Fit Visible is recommended) . Always have the keyboard selection cursor active in documents list end Third Page of the Accessibility Setup Assistant List of 3 items . Infer reading order from document (recommended) . Override the reading order in tagged documents and use a specific reading order (You will not usually need this option.) . Confirm before adding tags to documents (This is a nice new feature.) list end Fourth Page of the Accessibility Setup Assistant List of 1 items . Deliver all pages only for small documents (defined as 50 pages), choose to deliver currently visible pages, or deliver the entire document at once. (Opening entire documents can take more time.) list end Final Page of the Accessibility Setup Assistant List of 3 items . Disable document auto-save (Auto-save can cause assistive technology software to reload the document and restart reading from the beginning.) . Reopen documents to the last viewed page or the first page of a document . Display PDF documents in your Web browser (This checkbox is checked by default. You should uncheck it, as opening documents in Adobe Reader is the recommended choice.) list end NOTE: All of the options found in the Accessibility Setup Assistant are also found individually in the Adobe Reader 7 Preferences dialog. You can access the Preferences dialog from the Edit menu or by pressing CTRL+K. Back to Top from the Accessibility Setup Assistant section Tags in PDF Files In 2001, Adobe enhanced the PDF specification to allow the creation of "tagged" PDF files in Adobe Acrobat software. Tagging a PDF file improves the accessibility of the document, indicating the reading order and improving navigation, particularly for longer, more complex documents. It is also possible to add alternate text descriptions (alt text) to graphics appearing in tagged PDF documents and more. Back to Top from the Tags in PDF Files section Reading Untagged Documents With Adobe Reader 7 when you open a PDF document that is not tagged, you get a dialog box asking if you want it to add tags to the document. When this happens you are given the ability to choose from different reading orders and reading modes. Press ENTER to accept the default settings when you encounter this dialog box. Back to Top from the Reading Untagged Documents section Accessibility Quick Check for PDF Files To do a quick check of a document's accessibility, go to the Document menu and choose Accessibility Quick Check. A dialog box opens giving you a summary of how the document is set up. For an untagged document, you may get something like the following: Block quote start Accessibility Quick Check This document is not structured so the reading order may not be correct. Try different reading orders using the Reading Preferences panel. Block quote end Back to Top from the Accessibility Quick Check for PDF Files section Scanned Images as PDF In some cases you may open a PDF document that has been scanned and converted to PDF without any optical character recognition. Text may appear in the document visually, but it is only a scanned image and is not seen as text by the computer. When you run the Accessibility Quick Check on such a document you will receive a message something like the following: Block quote start Accessibility Quick Check This document appears to contain no text. It may be a scanned image. Block quote end If that happens, you can try to contact the author and ask them to convert it to text format. Alternatively, if you own a product that converts scanned images or PDF documents to text, such as OpenBook (another Freedom Scientific product), you can try that. Back to Top from the Scanned Images as PDF section Document Properties In the File menu there is a choice called Document Properties. You can also open the Document Properties by pressing CTRL+D. In this dialog box there is static text on the Description page that gives information such as PDF Producer, PDF Version, and whether the document is Tagged PDF or not. On the Security page of this dialog you find such things as whether Content Extraction for Accessibility is allowed, as well as if printing, copying, and more things are allowed. Back to Top from the Document Properties section Forms Mode in PDF Documents with JAWS JAWS uses the virtual cursor when reading PDF documents, just as it does when you are reading Web pages or HTML documents. When you encounter a PDF form, press the TAB key to move from field to field. Pressing ENTER while in an edit field turns on Forms Mode and you are able to type in information as needed. To get out of Forms Mode, press the NUM PAD PLUS key. 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