Reading PDF Documents with Voiceover

Reading PDF documents with VoiceOver

Assistive Technology Team, July 2012

This guide has been written using Preview and VoiceOver for Mac OSX. It is assumed that you are familiar with the VoiceOver reading keys. For a refresher see VoiceOver Keystrokes for Reading Text located at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/assistivetechnology/documents/Staff/VoiceOver_Reading_Keys.docx

Note that some PDFs may not be accessible due to the way they have been produced. If this is the case you should contact the distributor of the PDF to ask for an accessible copy.

Navigating a PDF document As well as reading a PDF document from beginning to end using CONTROL-OPTION-A there are several ways to navigate a PDF document.

To move around the text using standard VoiceOver reading keys, you must first interact with the text by locating the document within the Preview window (use TAB to cycle round the different elements of the window) and then pressing CONTROL-OPTION-SHIFT-DOWN-ARROW. To stop interacting with the text press CONTROL-OPTION-SHIFT-UP ARROW.

Use shortcuts to move between pages To move to the next page: PAGE DOWN (or Fn-DOWN ARROW) To move to the previous page: CTRL+PAGE UP (or Fn-UP ARROW) To move to the first page: HOME (or Fn-LEFT ARROW) To move to the last page: END (or Fn-RIGHT ARROW)

To go to a specific page: COMMAND-OPTION-G. Note that this moves you to the physical page of a document, rather than to the page numbered N. For example, a document might have four preface pages numbered with roman numerals. If you use COMMAND-OPTION-G and then type 20 and press Enter, you will arrive at the page numbered 16 in the document, rather than the page numbered 20.

Using the Table of Contents If the document has a Table of Contents, from the main document press TAB to go to it. If you hear “Outline View” before a heading, this indicates that the table of contents is open and you can navigate it by using the arrow keys. If you hear “Image Browser”, you will need to choose the table of contents by pressing TAB, pressing the right arrow to hear “table of contents” and then SPACE to select it. You will then need to press SHIFT-TAB to go to the headings list in the table of contents.

The table of contents may be a tree, that is, there may be several nested levels of headings. If VoiceOver announces a heading and says “collapsed” after it, you can open the next level by using the RIGHT ARROW. When you have located a heading you want to jump to in the main document, press SPACE to jump to the top of the page containing that heading.

You will need to press SHIFT-TAB to return the focus to the document rather than the table of contents.

Using Bookmarks You can use COMMAND-D to create a bookmark to your current location in Preview. You can assign a name to the bookmark or leave the default name which is the name and page number of the document.

When you navigate to the menu bar in Preview and go to the Bookmarks menu (CTRL-OPTION-M, then B) selecting the saved bookmark by using the DOWN ARROW will both open the document in Preview and put you at the bookmarked page. It is like adding a bookmark in Safari.

Use VoiceOver Find To search the document using the VoiceOver Find Command: CONTROL-OPTION-F, then press CONTROL-OPTION-G to repeat search in the forward direction or CONTROL-OPTION-SHIFT-G to repeat search in the backwards direction.

Further Information For further help and advice, please contact the Assistive Technology Team by email at [email protected] or by phone on 01224 273336.