Reading
Large Documents in Adobe Reader with Screen Readers by Lanie
Molinar
With Acrobat Reader
DC, you can also unlock premium features to do more with PDFs
when you purchase a subscription to Adobe PDF
Pack, Adobe Export PDF, Adobe Send & Track,
or Adobe Sign.
You can obtain a copy
of it from the following website at https://get.adobe.com/reader/
If you notice when you
go to open up a PDF document that it opens in another program
(such as Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 or Mozilla Firefox) and
you do not want it to open in another program, you can set Adobe
Acrobat Reader as your default. You will need to locate a PDF
document on your computer then use the applications key. If
there is no applications key, you can use the Shift key + the
F10 key (to bring up the context menu). When the context menu
comes up, arrow until you get to the menu called open with, then
press the Enter key. A sub menu will come up and give you some
options. Locate the menu called choose another app, then press
the Enter key. NVDA might land on the ok button. If so, tab to
the list just below it. Locate the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC
program from the menu. Tab again and it will give you the option
to open it with it every time. Make sure the check box is
checked. Then, tab down to the ok button and press the Enter
key. Now when you go to open a PDF document it will open in the
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC program every time.
When you open up this
program it will have the good old style menus that go from left
to right, and the menus that drop down. These can be easily
navigated with your arrow keys.
When you are browsing
a PDF document, you can use some of NVDA’s quick navigation keys
to navigate the document - if it has been formatted correctly.
These are usually H for headings, K for links and G for
graphics.
Use the NVDA key +
down arrow key to read the page.
Go To Page... Shift +
Ctrl + N
Previous View… Alt +
Left Arrow
Next View… Alt + Right
Arrow
To obtain a full list of shortcuts for this program please go to
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/keyboard-shortcuts.html
With NVDA… to go to the top of the document you can use the Ctrl
+ Home keys
To go to the very
bottom of the document you can use the Ctrl +End keys
To go to the previous
page you can use the Ctrl + Page up keys or the Alt + left arrow
keys
To go to the next page
you can use the Ctrl + Page down keys or the Alt + right arrow
keys
This can be set to one
page, 2 pages or continuously.
There are a few
different options to choose from; for example single page view,
enable scrolling, two page view, two page scrolling, show gaps
between pages, show cover page in two page view and
automatically scroll.
There may be cases
where you have a PDF file and want to save it as a txt file.
This might be so you can review the txt file by sentence, word
or letter; and having it as a txt file means you can edit it as
well.
When you have your PDF
file loaded in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, to save your PDF file as
a txt file, press the Alt key (until the File menu comes up)
then arrow down until you hear NVDA say Save as other. A submenu
will come up. Press the Enter key on the txt menu. A save as
dialogue will now appear. NVDA will default to the file name.
Name it something easy to remember if you are changing the file
name. If you do not it will call it the name of the file it was
called with a txt file extension on it.
Next, tab until you
hear a location for the file to be saved in (for example the
desktop or my documents). You might have to change the location
to where you want it; and you should hear NVDA say the name of
it. After a location has been chosen, Shift/Tab a few times
until you get back to the save button, then press the Enter key.
Now, your PDF file will be converted to a txt file, where you
can read it using a supported word processor.
In the case where a
person is using a screen reader, when the PDF document is
opened, the screen reader is used to read out the document. In
some cases, it might not be able to if it is a scanned image of
a document.
In the case where
someone might not use a screen reader (and still has some
vision) you can have the PDF document read out to you. To do
this, press the Alt key + the letter V. Arrow down to the Read
Out Loud menu. A
submenu will come up giving you some options. These will be:
Activate Read Out Loud
Shift + Ctrl + Read
This Page Only Shift +
Ctrl + V
Read To End of
Document Shift + Ctrl + B
Pause Shift + Ctrl + C
Stop Shift + Ctrl + E
To get it to read the
document, you will need to tell it first how much of the
document you want it to read; then activate it for it to start
reading the document. After the document has been read, it can
then be deactivated. The readout aloud feature uses the inbuilt
Sapi voice within the program.
When you go to read a
PDF document and you are using a type of adaptive technology, it
should bring up the accessibility section (where you will have
to go through some sections answering some questions). If this
section does not come up you can then press the Alt + E key to
bring up the Edit menu. Next, arrow down to the section that
says accessibility. A
submenu will come up and give you two options. One will be to
change reading options and the other is setup assistant. If you
choose the reading options, press the Enter key. You will now be
given some options to go through with your adaptive technology.
Depending on how you set this section, it will determine how it
is read (for example: the page could be being viewed one page at
a time or continually as in the entire document).
If you choose the
second option called setup assistant, press the Enter key and
you will be given 2 different options. One will be for a person
using magnification, and one will be for a screen reader user.
Choose the option that suits you and your adaptive technology
and answer the questions given to suit your adaptive technology
preferences.
With the PDF document
you are viewing you can also use the arrow keys to review it
letter by letter or add the Ctrl key + right or left arrow key
to review it word by word. This will not edit the document.
You can also use NVDAs
review text commands. These are found in the user manual and let
you read the PDF document by line (previous line Numpad 7,
current line - where the review cursor is Numpad 8, and the next
line Numpad 9); by word ( the previous word Numpad 4, current
word Numpad 5, and next word Numpad 6); and character (the
previous character Numpad 1, current character Numpad 2 and next
character Numpad 3). These commands will only review the
document but will not edit it. Please
note: this is done on the numeric keypad and the Num Lock key
must be turned off.
For more information
on the commands needed for both a desktop user and laptop user,
please see the user manual and the section called reviewing
text.
Many
people, including me until recently, have had problems with
Adobe Reader for Windows jumping to a different page when trying
to read large documents with screen readers. This can be very
frustrating. It led me to look for an alternative, as I am in
college and a course I am taking provides the textbook in PDF
format. None of the alternatives I found, including reading the
textbook in my browser, were as feature-rich as Adobe, so I
explored the settings and the Internet to try and find a way to
keep it from jumping around. I finally found the right
combination of settings, so I wanted to share this to help
others. Here are the settings you need to change and how to find
them.
Note: Feel
free to change other options that are not listed here. I will
only discuss those you should change before reading a large
document.
1. If this is your first time using Adobe Reader, it
will tell you that an assistive technology like a screen reader
was detected on your computer and take you to the accessibility
setup assistant. If you have used it before, you will need to
launch the assistant by pressing Alt + E for the Edit menu,
pressing Y or arrowing to the accessibility submenu, and then
pressing S or arrowing to the setup assistant option. From here
the process is the same for first-time users and those who have
used Adobe Reader before.
2.
The first page asks what assistive technology you
are using. You can set all options, those for screen magnifiers,
those for screen readers, or use recommended settings and skip
the setup. For this tutorial, we will select the option for
screen readers. Tab to the next button or press Alt + N to go to
the next page.
3.
This page does not have any settings that need to
be changed to make viewing large documents easier, so change
what you want or just skip to the next page.
4.
On this page, set Adobe Reader to only read the
visible pages in large documents. Otherwise, it will take a long
time to load the document, and Adobe Reader may stop responding.
5.
Also on this page, check the box to override the
page layout style, and choose the single page option in the
following combo box.
6.
Also check the override document zoom box and make
sure the combo box is set to 1x. Then go to the next page.
7. Here, check the box to disable document autosave. I
also have the option to reopen documents to the last viewed page
checked, but this is a personal preference and will not cause
problems when reading. Click the done button to close the
assistant.
These
steps should help you read large documents without the
frustration you may have experienced before. They definitely
helped me! Please feel free to let me know if my directions are
not clear enough or if I should add something. Click this link
to generate a new email message with my email address in the to:
field and the subject “Adobe Reader Tutorial Feedback:
mailto:laniemolinar91@gmail.com