[orca-list] Accessibility report: Adobe Acroreader for Linux on Ubuntu 12.04

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Hi, folks,

I remember reading somewhere that Adobe's reader uses QT on its Linux
port.  Now that QT apps are accesible, I went ahead and installed it
onto my Ubuntu Precise installation a couple days ago.  Here are my
findings:

Preliminary note:  the command to install adobe reader is as follows.

sudo apt-get install acroread

You will get a debconf dialog with a license agreement button.  After
selecting forward, you will be asked if you want Adobe Reader as your
primary pdf reader.  It's up to you what you select.

A11y notes:
1.  Menus:  All menus of the application are fully accessible and
navigable with Orca.
2.  Preferences dialog.  The preferences dialog is fully accessible
with Orca.  It works as expected right down to the accessibility tab.
3.  Reading order dialog.  This dialog is also fully accessible.
Telling Adobe how to read an untagged document is as easily done in
Linux as it is in Windows with Jaws.
4.  PDF documents.  10% accessible.  I tested it out with the eBook:
Linux Command Line pdf version.  You can change pages and know where
you are on the document.  One line of the document is read by Orca
though you can't control which line of the document it is.  Doing a
select all, copy and paste into Gedit is sort of productive but you
don't get as much of the pdf as you thought you would.
5.  Read out loud feature.  I never got it to work in Linux.  I've
used it in windows for some pdf's that are locked down and don't let
you get at them through conventional means.  The voice that I get is
whatever one I have as the default Sapi 5 voice.  I don't know what it
is programmed to use in Linux.  worth investigating as it is a darn
useful feature.
6.  Yet to test:  Adobe Reader has a save as feature where you can get
it to save your pdf as plain text.  In windows, it does it in such a
manner that it makes pirating a book prohibitively labor-intensive but
still usable for a screan reader user.  Each word is on its own
separate line.  Your speech software won't notice the difference but
your braille display will and anyone looking at your screen will also.
 I find it a tiny inconvenience when you consider that it makes a
document that much easier to read with a text editor.  I ran out of
time and haven't had a chance to test this feature out.  If anyone
wants to see how well it works in Linux, be my guest.


I hope you all found this informative.  Accessible pdf's is an area
that needs some serious tlc in Linux as this type of document is a
natural choice for cross platform publishing.  It would be nice if we
could access them without having to use hack arounds like pdf2rtf or
pdf2html.

Best Regards,
Alex M