Six accessibility tools and features

Because Adobe PDF documents can vary in their levels of accessibility, Adobe Reader provides options to enhance your reading and viewing experience for a multitude of documents. Below are the six accessibility features that you can choose from:

• Accessibility Setup Assistant — for setting preferences all at once for a screen reader, screen magnifier, or other assistive technology. See "Running the Accessibility Setup Assistant".
• Accessibility Quick Check — for determining how accessible a PDF document is for your needs. See "Performing an accessibility Quick Check".
• Read Out Loud — for hearing the contents of a document read aloud if you don't have a screen reader. See "Using the Read Out Loud tool".
• Reflow view — for temporarily presenting the text of a PDF document in a single, easy-to-read column on the screen. This feature works well with automatic scrolling. See "Using Reflow view for easy, single-column reading".
• Automatic scrolling — for paging through a document without a keyboard or mouse. This feature is especially suited for use with Reflow view. See "Using automatic scrolling".
• Save As Text — for saving a PDF document to text so that other alternative translation technologies, such as Braille translators, can use it. See "Saving an Adobe PDF document as text".

Running the Accessibility Setup Assistant

To start the Accessibility Setup Assistant:

• Choose Help > Accessibility Setup Assistant (in Windows, press Alt+H, and then press T).

Note for Windows users: The Accessibility Setup Assistant automatically opens the first time that you run Adobe Reader while a screen reader or screen magnifier is running.

Navigating the Accessibility Setup Assistant screens

The Accessibility Setup Assistant has five screens, each of which you navigate in the same way.

• To move forward and backward among the options on a screen, press Tab and Shift+Tab, respectively.
• To select an option that has focus, press the Spacebar.
• To proceed to the next screen, select Next (if this button is available). You can select Next at any time by pressing Enter or Return, even if focus is not on the Next button.
• To return to the previous screen, select Back (if this button is available).
• To exit the wizard, select Cancel.
• To accept your settings on the last screen, select Done. You can select Done by pressing Enter or Return, even if focus is not on the Done button.

Note: If you select Cancel at any point, Adobe Reader uses its own default settings, rather than the wizard's settings, for accessibility. This configuration is not recommended.

Accessibility Setup Assistant options

All of the accessibility options in the Accessibility Setup Assistant are described below, organized by the five screens on which they typically appear.

Note: Your choice on screen 1 determines the actual screens and options that the wizard presents. You may not see all of the choices described here.

Accessibility options on screen 1

Screen 1 of the Accessibility Setup Assistant has four choices:

• Set Options For Screen Readers
• Set Options For Screen Magnifiers
• Set All Accessibility Options
• Use Recommended Settings And Skip Setup. Select this button to use the wizard’s recommended settings for accessibility.

Keep in mind that Accessibility Setup Assistant defaults are different from Adobe Reader defaults. The wizard's defaults are optimized for your assistive technology. When you run the setup wizard while using your assistive technology for the first time, and you select Use Recommended Settings And Skip Setup in the setup wizard, Adobe Reader is configured with the settings that are most appropriate for use with that assistive technology. If, however, you select Cancel at any time that the setup wizard runs for the first time alongside your assistive technology, Adobe Reader uses the Adobe Reader defaults. These defaults are not as optimal for a specific assistive technology as those that the Accessibility Setup Assistant selects.

If you run the Accessibility Setup Assistant from the Help menu, the wizard uses the current values from the Preferences dialog box to set its defaults. These values also may not always be optimal for your specific assistive technology. When running the Accessibility Setup Assistant from the Help menu, you should therefore review the values and descriptions in the setup wizard carefully, and possibly change these values to meet your situation.

The first screen of the Accessibility Setup Assistant, where you can indicate the type of assistive technology that you are using.

Accessibility options on screen 2

Screen 2 of the Accessibility Setup Assistant has up to four choices:

• Use High-Contrast Colors For Document Text. This option lets you choose from a list of five contrasting color combinations for text and background. You can also set this option in the Accessibility category of the Preferences dialog box (where you also have more choice over colors). See "Setting color contrast for improved readability".
• Disable Text Smoothing. This option makes text sharper and easier to read with a screen magnifier. You can also set this option in the Page Display category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Adjusting the page display".
• Default Display Zoom. This option enables you to set a default zoom view at which to magnify documents on the screen. You can choose either a percentage value of the page size (8.33% to 6400%) or one of five zoom presets (Automatic, Fit Width, Fit Page, Fit Visible, Actual Size). This option enables people with low vision to read PDF documents more easily in Reflow view. You can also set this option in the Page Display category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Adjusting the page display".
• Always Use The Keyboard Selection Cursor. This option makes the keyboard selection cursor (a flashing vertical line that indicates an insertion point in the text) always appear within the text of the current page. This feature enables you to begin using the keyboard immediately to select text, instead of requiring you to activate the Select tool. Select this option if you use a screen magnifier. You can also set this option in the Accessibility category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Displaying the keyboard selection cursor at all times".

Accessibility options on screen 3

Screen 3 of the Accessibility Setup Assistant has up to five choices:

• Infer Reading Order From Document (Recommended). This option tells Adobe Reader to interpret the reading order of untagged documents by using an advanced method of layout analysis.
• Left-To-Right, Top-To-Bottom Reading Order. This option tells Adobe Reader to interpret the reading order of untagged documents starting from left to right on the page and moving from top to bottom.
• Use Reading Order In Raw Print Stream. This option tells Adobe Reader to interpret the reading order of untagged documents based on the code in the PDF document.
• Override The Reading Order In Tagged Documents. This option tells Adobe Reader to use the reading order that you specified above instead of using the reading order specified by the tag structure of a tagged document. This option is useful if you receive PDF documents that are poorly tagged.
• Confirm Before Adding Tags To Document. This option tells Adobe Reader to let you confirm its tagging options before it prepares an untagged document for reading by your assistive technology. Tagging can be a time-consuming procedure, particularly in larger documents.

You can also set all five of these options in the Reading category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Selecting the reading order of text".

Accessibility options on screen 4

Screen 4 of the Accessibility Setup Assistant has up to four choices:

• Deliver Currently Visible Pages. Select this option to load information about one page or a few pages at a time into the memory buffer of a screen reader.
• Deliver The Entire Document At Once. Select this option to load the entire document at one time into the memory buffer of a screen reader. This option may negatively affect performance for large documents.
• Deliver All Pages Only For Small Documents. Choose this option to have Adobe Reader selectively switch between loading an entire document at once into the memory buffer of a screen reader and loading one page at a time into the buffer if the document exceeds a certain number of pages.
• Maximum Number Of Pages In A Small Document. Select this option to set the page number limit at which you want Adobe Reader to stop loading an entire PDF document into the memory buffer for a screen reader.

You can also set all four of these options in the Reading category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Controlling the delivery method of pages for assistive technology".

Accessibility options on screen 5

Screen 5 of the Accessibility Setup Assistant has up to three choices:

• Disable Document Auto-Save. Select this option to disable the auto-save function. Each time a PDF document is auto-saved, the screen reader or magnifier must reload the document. You can also set this option in the General category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Disabling document auto-save".
• Reopen Documents To The Last Viewed Page. This option enables you to save your place in the document for the next time you open it. You can also set this option in the Startup category of the Preferences dialog box. See "Reopening documents to the last viewed page".
• Display PDF Documents In the web Browser. This option opens PDF documents from the Internet in the web browser instead of a separate Adobe Reader window. Deselect this option for greater control when navigating a document in a screen reader, or if your screen reader does not support PDF in a browser. You can also set this option in the Internet category of the Preferences dialog box. See “Setting the display of Adobe PDF documents from the Web”.

Note: If you are running the Accessibility Setup Assistant while a PDF document is open in the browser, you will not be able to change the last option above.

page:

1. 1
2. 2

• Printable version (PDF: 3.8M)