Bug 142376 - Links from table of content in generated PDF not accessible for screen reader
Summary: Links from table of content in generated PDF not accessible for screen reader
Status: RESOLVED NOTOURBUG
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Printing and PDF export (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.1.3.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Thorsten Behrens (allotropia)
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks: PDF-Export PDF-Accessibility
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2021-05-19 11:20 UTC by Mikael
Modified: 2022-11-03 13:02 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
A table of content with hypertext links (11.24 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2021-05-19 11:20 UTC, Mikael
Details
Example file exported to PDF/UA with LO 7.0 from bibisect-linux repo (31.88 KB, application/pdf)
2022-10-25 07:00 UTC, Gabor Kelemen (allotropia)
Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Mikael 2021-05-19 11:20:09 UTC
Created attachment 172173 [details]
A table of content with hypertext links

The links generated for the table of contents in PDF are clickable in Firefox and other browsers as expected. 

The issue is that the same links are not detected by screen readers as tested with Orca and NVDA.
- https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
- https://www.nvaccess.org/download/

Source file used to export to PDF with Universal access option selected is attached.

Under links the following options were selected: Named destinations, PDF targets, and URLs relative to file system.
Also the Open with Internet browser was selected.

Many thanks!
Comment 1 Mikael 2021-05-20 21:49:07 UTC
Hello,

We start to suspect there may be an issue with the Orca screen reader
and possibly not with the generated document.
We will get back to you when we have done some more experimenting to verify.

Thanks
Comment 2 Eleonora Govallo 2021-08-23 21:44:35 UTC
MNo repro in Version: 7.3.0.0.alpha0+ / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: adf65471e889676a600a9c6d0454c75cbd549ad3
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: ru-RU (ru_RU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64@86-TDF, Branch:master, Time: 2021-08-13_04:44:18
Calc: threaded
Comment 3 Timur 2022-05-13 13:27:02 UTC
There is another bug 148934 but this one is for Orca/NVDA. 
Mikael, please confirm you checked PDF/UA in PDF export dialog.
Eleonora please confirm with which reader software you tested.
Comment 4 Thorsten Behrens (allotropia) 2022-10-11 11:36:41 UTC
I'll look into it.
Comment 5 Gabor Kelemen (allotropia) 2022-10-25 07:00:00 UTC
Created attachment 183249 [details]
Example file exported to PDF/UA with LO 7.0 from bibisect-linux repo

I exported the example file from LO master to docx on win, then the docx to PDF with Word 16. Compared the simple Writer-exported PDF in Evince, when Orca is reading. In both cases the TOC entries are read up like "1 Intro Link" "2 Content Link" by Orca. Also happens with file exported from 7.0.

Only way to make it *not* work was to open the PDF in Firefox - but then, Orca (in Ubuntu 18.04) does not read anything in Firefox, not even its own help page, which is plain HTML. So the whole thing must be somehow broken there.

PDF reading is a bit better in Chromium, but Link is not read by Orca, not with Writer-made PDF, nor with Word-made PDF. For plain HTML, it is read. 

I opened the exported file in PAC tool, and it does not complain about issues related to links either, only the missing alt descriptions (which is bug 148934).

"Also the Open with Internet browser was selected." - writes the reporter. So I think this is what they experienced.
Comment 6 Thorsten Behrens (allotropia) 2022-11-03 13:02:33 UTC
From the analysis thus far, nothing much we can do here. Closing as NOTOURBUG (i.e. an issue somewhere between browser and screenreader, not the generated PDF).