Adobe reader

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The Accessibility Setup Assistant

A wizard for setting up almost all accessibility preferences at once based on your particular assistive technology. See Running the Accessibility Setup Assistant.

Support for assistive technology

Such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, and the accessibility features of the Windows and Mac OS operating systems.

Read Out Loud

A built-in text-to-speech synthesizer that you can use if you do not have access to a screen reader.

To enable the Read Out Loud. Select “Read Out Loud” from the “View” menu and then select one of the options listed below or the equivalent shortcut.

• Read This Page Only (Ctrl + Shift + V);
• Read To End of Document (Ctrl + Shift + B);
• Pause/Resume (Ctrl + Shift + C);
• Stop (Ctrl + Shift + E);

To change the default Read Out Loud attributes, select “Preferences” from the Edit“ menu (or press CTRL+K)and then select “Reading” from the list of categories on the left side of the window.

Several important attributes can be changed there:

• Volume;
• Voice;
• Pitch;
• Speed;
• Read form fields *;

Note 1: Some systems may not support the Read Out Loud tool.

Note 2: If a PDF document doesn't seem to be reading aloud in the most logical order, the document may not be adequately tagged and structured for optimal reading.

* By default “Read form fields” is not selected, so any form fields encountered will be bypassed. To navigate from field to field, use Tab to move forward and Shift + Tab to move backward. The text entered in the field is not read as it is typed, but it is read when the user leaves the field.

Reflow view

Allows you too read multicolumn layouts as one column of text. Reflowing a document eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling and changes the reading order to reflect either the order of the PDF tags, or if the document is untagged, tries to infer the correct reading order.

This is useful when you do not have a screen magnifier, or when you are using a PDA. To enable reflow, select “Reflow” from the “View” menu or press Ctrl + 4.

Auto-scrolling

Automatic scrolling reduces required keyboard actions. To enable automatic scrolling, select “Automatically Scroll” from the “View“ menu or press Ctrl + Shift + H. The other shortcuts are:

• Start/stop (Ctrl + Shift + H);
• Change scrolling speed (Number key 0-9 or Up and Down arrows);
• Change scrolling direction reverse/forward (Hyphen or minus (-) key);
• Previous/next page (Left or right arrow key);

Save as text

The option to save a PDF document to text for Braille or other output.To save a PDF document as accessible text:

1. Select "Save As Text" from the "File" menu or press Alt+F, and then pressV);
2. Activate the Save As Type drop-down menu (press Alt+T), and choose Text (Accessible) (*.txt);
3. Name the file and locate the drive and folder where the file should be stored;
4. Select Save or press Alt+S;

High contrast colours

Custom colours can be substituted for the default text and background by selectiing “Preferences” from the “Edit” menu and then selecting “Accessibility” from the list of categories on the left side of the window.

If you check the box labelled “Replace Document Colours” you then have several options for colour schemes:

• Use Windows color scheme.
  If you have a special colour scheme for your computer already, this is probably the best option;
• Use High-contrast colour combination;
You can choose green, yellow or white text on a black background as well as white text on a black background;

Custom colour.

You can select any colours. There are also two additional features which can be enabled or disabled:

• Only change the colour of black text or line art;
• Change the colour of line art as well as text;

Keyboard alternatives

For most mouse actions for navigating PDF documents.

Disable text smoothing

Disabling text smoothing can make text easier to read when enlarged, especially with a screen magnifier.

To disable text smoothing, select “Preferences” from the “edit” menu and then select “Page Display” from the list of categories on the left side of the window. You can then select or de-select “Smooth text”, “Smooth line art” or “Smooth images”.

Default display zoom

The default display zoom can be set from 8.33% to 6400%. In Edit > Preferences > Page Display there is a section labelled “Magnification”. Under this section you can change the default zoom and the maximum zoom available.

Keyboard selection cursor

The Hand Tool is usually the default pointer while hovering over a PDF, but you can make the Select Tool the default pointer instead. The Select Tool allows you to highlight text and other elements both with the mouse and with the keyboard.

This change can be made by selecting "Always use the keyboard selection cursor" in the Accessibility Setup Assistant or by selecting "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu and then select “Accessibility” from the list of categories on the left side of the window.

Checking "Always display the keyboard selection cursor" at the bottom of the window, this option, alls a blinking cursor in the body of the PDF and it can be moved with the keyboard.

Disable auto save

Auto save can cause a file to reload, causing confusion, particularly for screen reader users. To disable auto save do one of the following:

• Select "Disable document auto-save" in the Accessibility Setup Assistant;
• Select "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu and then select “General” from the list of categories on the left side of the window then De-select "Automatically save document changes to temporary file every 5 minutes";

Display in a new window

You can choose whether to open Acrobat Reader within the browser or whether to launch the program externally. It is easier to access certain features like Read Out Loud and auto-scrolling in a separate window. To change this do one of the following:

• In the Accessibility Setup Assistant, de-select "Display PDF documents in the web browser";
• Select "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu and then select “Internet” from the list of categories on the left side of the window and then de-select "Display PDF in browser";

Numerous other preferences

For controling how screen readers and the Read Out Loud tool read PDF documents is the following ways:

• Select the method that Adobe Reader uses to analyze the reading order of text, to improve how screen readers and Adobe Reader tools and features read untagged or poorly tagged Adobe PDF documents.
• Choose to deliver pages or an entire document at a time into memory for a screen reader.
• Use Full Screen view to enlarge the content to fit the full size of your screen, hiding all menus, windows, and other Adobe Reader interface elements.
• Adjust the page display to control whether Adobe Reader displays partial or complete pages, and whether Adobe Reader displays multiple pages at the same time.
• Simplify filling out fillable forms by turning on the Auto-Complete (auto-completion of form fields) feature and by changing the colors of form fields to make them more visible.
• Setting the tab order to match the reading order in a tagged PDF document.
• Set Adobe Reader to open a PDF document to the page you were viewing the last time you closed the document.
• Enable single-key accelerators to increase the number of keystrokes that are available for selecting tools and navigating Adobe Reader.