Adobe Acrobat is a program that is used to open and edit pdf's, as well as fill out form pdf's. In this article, tips for using Adobe Acrobat desktop with assistive technology will be discussed. Some examples of assistive technology include screen readers, magnification software, and text to speech readers.

Using Acrobat with a Screen Reader

• If a PDF is encountered where there is text inside of an image, the document would not typically be accessible with a screen reader. However, if one of these documents is opened, Adobe Acrobat will present a prompt asking if you would like to run text recognition to make the document accessible. Press yes, and click the okay button on the next screen. Now the document can be reviewed with a screen reader.
• If the document being opened in Acrobat was converted to text with the text recognition functionality do note there can occasionally be issues with accuracy. Accuracy can depend on factors such as the clarity of the text in the image.
• When creating a digital ID, the text boxes to input your name and other signature info are read as unavailable. However, these boxes are actually editable.
• When typing text into the digital ID fields, Jaws doesn't read the text when using the left/right arrow keys to review. To hear what is in the text box, tab out of it and back into it, or use the up and down arrows to read all of the text in the box.

Using Acrobat Text to Speech Reader

Apart from using screen readers, Acrobat offers an integrated text-to-speech reader known as Read Out Loud. Simply follow these steps to have Acrobat Reader read PDF aloud:

1. Open Acrobat and navigate to the document page you want to have read aloud.
2. From the top-left menu, click View, then Read Out Loud. 
3. Activate Read Out Loud (or press Shift + Ctrl + Y).

Learn more about Adobe Read Out Loud.