Hello Alastair
Our Accessibility and User Evaluation team have done some testing on this and have found the same as you. These are their findings:
Summary:
- On the latest version of Adobe Reader 2024 when you try to reflow it will reset any magnification
and take it back to the ‘Fit to width’ setting.
- The only way around this issue is to go ‘View > Disable Acrobat Reader’.
- The bug doesn’t happen in Adobe Acrobat Pro 2023.
- The bug doesn’t happen in the latest version of Adobe Reader on iPhone when using liquid mode
to reflow.
- There is some discussion on the web about this issue and the assumption is Adobe will release
a fix soon.
There are apparently some other significant bug issues also being addressed by Adobe.
Best wishes
Anne
Dr Anne Campbell SFHEA CPhys MInstP DPN(Y), Educational Developer/Senior Manager
Associate Lecturer Support and Professional Development, Tutor Experience Services and Support, The Open University
Normal working days Monday to Thursday
+44 (0) 131 549 7950
From: Future
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On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2024 8:46 AM
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Subject: Acrobat Reader update - accessibility fail?
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Hi all
I’ve discovered a problem with the new look Acrobat Reader. I just want to ensure that it’s not due to some idiosyncrasy of my machine or my setup.
The image below shows the message I got, so I enabled the new version.
However, as soon as I tried to magnify and reflow a PDF (one that I knew to have good accessibility), I hit a significant problem. It would refresh the screen for a fraction of a second, show a reflowed and magnified version then instantly
revert to the original non-reflowed view.
I’ve explored every setting I could find and have been unable to resolve it – other than going back to the hamburger menu on the new version and hitting the option to “Disable new Acrobat Reader”.
As soon as I disabled the new view my accessible PDFs reflowed again.
My fear is that IT teams might automatically install the new look by default and thereby instantly make even accessible PDFs less accessible. Please check your own set up and if you find the same problem, disable the new Acrobat Reader.
It should give you an option to say why – use that to give them some appropriate feedback.
And do report any experiences back to this list so we can get some evidence if it turns out to be a systemic design flaw.
Many thanks
Alistair
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