Have you tried Tagging a PDF with Arabic content?

[Zaid Al Hilali]

In my tests, I'm struggling to keep the integrity of the Arabic content intact, each time I run "Autotag Document" some of the characters shifts from original location to overlap other words.

Any body tried to tag Arabic PDF, or set up accessibility of PDFs with Arabic content? Reading options shows Left to Right only, there isn't right to left, but may be I cannot fined it.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

As an Acrobat enthusiast I'm deeply saddened each time I work on a PDF with Arabic content in Acrobat, well except for Arabic forms which works mostly manually.

Since I posted above question a month ago, I tested quite a bit accessibility remediation for Arabic content in PDF using Adobe Acrobat Accessibility options, below are screenshots of the tags panel, content panel, "Read Out Loud" option as all three fails to either display Arabic properly as in the PDF layout or fail to speak loudly Arabic text as shown in the layout which defies the whole purpose of Accessibility.

What I need to test now is an assistive device to assume the role of a visually impaired person who need to access PDF Arabic content.

Note below example PDF was generated from Adobe InDesign where I used InDesign's Article panel to flow articles, I used Paragraph styles then mapped my styles to H1, H2, P etc. PDF tags. I also used the Layers panel to order text and image frames in the order I wish them to display later in Acrobat's Order panel.

In below video, with "Read Out Loud" feature, Acrobat is reading the vertical yellow text on the far right of the spread "معالم اسطنبول" it reads each character separately, it just cannot pronounce a full Arabic word.

[Zaid Al Hilali · Accepted solution]

Regarding Reading Out Loud Arabic content in Adobe Acrobat, I received the following solution from Adobe Staff "Vivek Chandra"…

The default “Voice” of ROL is English, so it does not speak Arabic works right.

To get it working, you need to first download the corresponding language pack or Voice. In Mac its fairly simple : Go to Syatem Preferences → Accessibility → Speech. In ‘System Voice’ select any Arabic Voice (It would get downloaded first).

Now go to Acrobat → Preferences → Reading → Read Out Loud Options.

Uncheck the option “Use default voice” and in the ‘Voice’ Dropdown, select the Voice you just downloaded in System Preferences (the Arabic Voice).

Read the content and it should read fine.

On Windows, you need to download and Install the corresponding language pack before you can see the corresponding voice in Acrobat’s Rading Preferences.

Above solution worked perfectly on my Mac, now I'm able to listen to full words pronunciation compared to separate letters before this fix.

I hope that Acrobat team to address more Arabic issues so that we can have display Arabic text properly in Tags, Order, and Content panels.