nvaccess
Adobe Reader X: When performing text selection, visual highlight does not happen
Reported by kevinchao89 on 2012-03-19 11:54 Within Adobe Reader X, specifically in a PDF documetn, and highlighting/selecting text using SHIFT+ARROWS or SHIFT+CTRL+ARROWS, there is no visual highlight occurring. When performing text selection ,it is really important that visual highlight also occurs, allowing for blind to highlight specific text to show to sighted.
Comment 1 by jteh on 2012-03-19 12:01 Browse mode exists primarily because there is no caret (or no reliable caret) in these browsers. It is extremely difficult to synchronise between individual characters in our browse mode representation and the underlying document. I'm not even sure Reader allows for programmatic selection of text, though a quick look at the API suggests it might.
@jcsteh You expressed thoughts on this ticket in https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/2183#issuecomment-155296285 more than five years ago. Any updates? CC @Qchristensen and @feerrenrut also in case their sight may aid in diagnosing this somewhat visual-oriented issue...
Ideally, if we could visually highlight text while selecting, it would, as noted, aid sighted / low vision users, though how easy it would be to implement and how much overhead it would bring could be the issue. In some cases - in both Adobe Reader DC and web browsers for instance, you can select text with the mouse and it is visually highlighted, even though it may not be when done with the keyboard. I'll let others comment on the feasibility of implementing it though.
In Supernova, the highlighting works, but I used to find it was either ahead or behind the spoken words quite a lot of the time. Of course we had slower machines in those days. I'd imagine in say all it would be possible as long as you are not speed reading! Certainly when I'm trying to find a place on a web site and have some eyes with me, I'd like some way to indicate where I am to them so they can explain to me why I cannot get to the desired part. Brian
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Ah highlighting the word being spoken is, I believe, a different issue to the one this ticket is for, which is that when reading a PDF file (although the same is true in some, but not all other Browse mode documents), when you select text, for instance with shift+right arrow, the text is not visually highlighted.
For highlighting what is being read, the best option at present is the "focus highlight addon": https://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/focusHighlight.en.html
@Qchristensen is the text visually selected when switching to focus mode while reading the document in Adobe Reader and selecting with shift+arrow keys or ctrl+shift+arrow keys? If yes, then this issue migh be obsolete but there is anoter one. When switching to focus mode, NVDA does not report the characters at all when pressing arrow keys. cc: @leonardder
Selecting text in browse mode selects the text (so you can copy it, for instance) but does not visually highlight it.
Switching to focus mode, selecting text (with shift+arrows or control+shift+arrows) does a very interesting thing: It selects text, and highlights it visually, but NOT the text that NVDA was on. (Sometimes it is above, sometimes it is below, I haven't worked out exactly why it moves where it does). NVDA does not read anything when navigating or selecting in focus mode.
I have Adobe Reader DC, version 39.012.20040.17853.
@Qchristensen actually now you can turn on the focus highlighter in NVDA vision settings category. This should work for the virtual cursor in browse mode as well. Does this solve the problem? In that case we can close this issue as fixed. cc: @seanbudd for triaging.
I don't think this can be triaged in its current state - it needs an up-to-date thorough description of the issue
So I think there are two issues:
- When you select text on the web or in a PDF file without NVDA running, the text is highlighted visually. When NVDA is running and in browse mode, this selection is done and can be verified with NVDA+shift+up arrow (Laptop: NVDA+shift+s) but this is not visible to a sighted user.
This affects browsers and Adobe reader at least - and is overcome in Firefox with native selection mode at least. I couldn't readily find another issue specifically for that, but if it would be possible to rectify elsewhere it may be worth an issue (I'm guessing it is the same issue affecting browse mode in Adobe reader and on the web).
- In Adobe Reader (or Adobe Acrobat Pro 20 as I have) - in focus mode, NVDA does not read anything when navigating.
I'm not sure if there is a use case for reading a PDF file in focus mode when you can't edit it?
Perhaps for the first issue, which I think is what the original user wants, would it be possible to make native selection mode for PDF files? (And would that be better in its own issue?)
I meant to answer @Adriani90's question - No, NVDA's Vision highlight doesn't help here - it highlights the element / line / paragraph where the focus is, it doesn't indicate what is selected though.
