Reading PDF's on Mac with Adobe Acrobat

By Mohammad Aldalain, 10 December, 2015

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Greetings all
I am not sure if this has been posted before here, but I do find PDF documents almost fully accessible in Adobe Acrobat. I have read several posts of Mac users seeking recommendations for accessible PDF reader.
Would you please confirm this?

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Comments

By Bryan Jones on Thursday, December 10, 2015 - 22:06

Hello — In my testing, the current version of Adobe Reader DC running under MacOS 10.11.2 still treats PDF files as blobs of text with little formatting and no tagging, regardless of the actual content of the PDF file. This is no better than Apple’s own Preview, and in my definition, falls far short of making PDFs fully accessible. For example, it is possible to perform the following functions on tagged PDF files using NVDA with Adobe Reader on Windows, but not with VO on the Mac. If your experience differs, please take a minute to describe your findings.

1. How are you navigating tagged PDF files by headings, links, images, etc?

2. How are you navigating and filling in PDF forms?

3. How are you navigating tables?

4. Are columns in multi-column documents being read in the proper order?

5. Is alt text being read?

6. Are tables of contents being read properly, and are the ToC items functioning as links to jump to the correct chapter?

7. Are the page down / page up commands working correctly, moving VO focus to the previous / next page?

8. Are page numbers being read correctly?

-Bryan
Adobe Reader DC Version 15.009.20077
Mac OS X 10.11.2

By Mohammad Aldalain on Saturday, December 12, 2015 - 06:54

Well, I might have misunderstood full accessibility! What I have seen in my PDF's that they are just fine, I can read them yet with QuickNav switched on, if it is off nothing is announced. To navigate to pages I go to View, Page Navigation and press return on Next or Previous. Page numbers are shown on the top of each page, though I can not confirm if the numbering is part of the text itself or it is something Adobe announces. I could select all the text in one PDF book, and copied that and pasted it into TextEdit blank document and it did work.
Maybe my documents are too simple to show what a full accessibility is.

By Ahmed Hamdy on Saturday, December 12, 2015 - 07:02

please tell me how, when i open adobe, i find nothing, even don't know how to copy the text.
how do you read by toggling quick nav on? in which area in the app?

By Ahmed on Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 22:50

I’ve previously tried using the non-DC version of AdobeReader app which was inaccessible at the time I tested it. and still is to VoiceOver. To confirm my findings I’ve did actual testing

By KE7ZUM on Thursday, November 28, 2019 - 15:43

I have used and uninstalled the DC version. I use skim now.