RE: Blank Pages & Screen Readers

"A third page that is blank was also added because we are told that when a screen reader encounters a blank page that's a signal to the screen reader that it is at the end of the document."

Bill,

I use two or three different screen readers and have never come across any problems with detecting the end of a PDF file. As a rule, the end of the content is the accepted end of the document.

Would be happy to take a quick look at your PDF if it would help though. 

Regards,
Léonie Watson - Director of Accessibility

http://www.nomensa.com/


________________________________________
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of William R Williams [wrwilliams@fs.fed.us]
Sent: 05 November 2010 19:04
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Blank Pages & Screen Readers

All,

I have been assisting some co-workers and contractors in producing accessible, 2-page PDF files from some fairly complicated Word templates, while following various guidelines, tutorials, etc. available for this workflow (such as Adobe's accessibililty guides for PDFs). Someone provided the following statement to me which I have never heard before ... and somehow doesn't seem intuitive:

"A third page that is blank was also added because we are told that when a screen reader encounters a blank page that's a signal to the screen reader that it is at the end of the document."

It seems to me that an end of a document is the end and no further "signals" are necessary. I wonder if this is accurate, is it recommended as a best practice?

Any information or experiences with this is appreciated. Thanks!

Bill Williams<http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/>

Received on Friday, 5 November 2010 19:27:39 UTC