Deafblind EngineerFeb 11, 2023

Microsoft has announced it is replacing the fairly basic PDF reader currently built into the Edge browser, which is currently accessible with a screen reader, with a new one powered by Adobe's pay-to-play Acrobat PDF engine. #Accessibility #a11y

Source: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/10/microsoft_edge_pdf_acrobat/

Microsoft switches Edge’s PDF reader to pay-to-play Adobe Acrobat

And yes, sure, totally secure

The Register
Show threadLarry HudsonFeb 11, 2023

@deafblind in my testing, the current built in PDF viewer in Chrome and Edge has pretty bad screen reader support - while it reads out the content, the order does not match the tags of the PDF and a lot of the structural information does not come across from a tagged PDF. More detail here:

https://www.informationaccessgroup.com/news/pdf-viewers-screen-readers.html

So switching to an engine made by Adobe might be good for screen reader users - Acrobat communicates the info from a tagged PDF more reliably. But would love to hear your experience.

Comparing how well PDF viewer applications work with screen readers | Information Access Group

The Information Access Group is a full-service design and communication agency that specialises in accessibility. We create documents that are easy to read and websites that are easy to use.

Show threadDeafblind EngineerFeb 11, 2023
@larryhudson I've used Acrobat Pro for years but recently I have been using the PDF viewer in Edge as I can quickly read the content on my braille display. I'm not fussy about any formatting, etc ... just as long as I can read the content quickly. To be honest I don't like PDFs, if I can avoid them I will.
Show threadLarry Hudson

@deafblind that makes sense, thanks for sharing. Staying in the web browser is definitely a more seamless experience. And if the majority of PDFs aren’t tagged, the issue I mentioned above doesn’t make much of a difference.

Definitely agree about avoiding PDFs where possible, at work we try to steer clients towards publishing everything as webpages

Feb 11, 2023 at 11:19amWeb
Show threadDeafblind EngineerFeb 11, 2023
@larryhudson Publishing everything as webpages certianly improves accessibility. I'm currently looking at the PDF viewer in Firefox to see if that is better or worse.