accessibility - turn it off ?

The "Reading Untagged Document" prompt indicates that Acrobat has detected assistive technology on your computer -- perhaps a screen reader or speech recognition software. Thus Acrobat/Reader is preparing the document for this device -- unfortunately without asking first.

The bad news is that you can't disable it through an Acrobat Preference setting. You can decrease the frequency via Edit --> Preferences --> Reading Panel Screen Reader options: Only read the currently visible pages.Another option is to disable the plug-in responsible for this.
Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat\plug_ins
and rename either accessibility.api or readoutloud.api to accessibility.old or readoutloud.old resp.

Doing this means you'll lose the other accessibility/read out loud features, but it will prevent the content preparation message.

First - Thank you very much for the definitive answer to the question that's been bugging me for a while now! :)

Just another quick related one, if I may... Is there any way to tell exactly what "assistive technology" Reader has detected on my system? I don't have any that I'm aware of, and at least none that I recall intentionally installing. Maybe it's something I enabled accidentally or some such thing (?) and can resolve this from that angle.

But in any case, thank you again for answering my question, I'm very happy to be able to resolve this properly to my satisfaction!

Cheers!

It worked! Thanks very much.

Jim

Another member of our U2U forums also had this suggestion to correct the problem -- turn off the Accessibility programs (if you don't need them) under the Windows Accessibility Utility Manager.

Turning off the Accessibility programs doesn't stop this #@%$. Renaming the plugin does.

Why in the world is there not a simple way of making this program work for the 90%+ that don't need this feature? Don't auto-detect (especially since you can't do it right), have a option to turn it on-off. You might have some of the Accessibility Options on, but not want Acrobat to turn its on.

Thank you! Renaming the plug-in files works perfectly although you need to make sure to do it for the plug-ins in both the Acrobat and Reader directories if you have both installed on your system.

I ran into this same problem. Windows is the problem here; its Narrator feature was inadvertantly turned on.
Instead of renaming the plugin, you can disable the Microsoft Narrator by going to Start>All Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>Utility Manager, or simply pressing Windows+U. Then Stop the Narrator.

I agree with puffykit. This is a Windows problem. I'm using Windows 7 RC.

This started happening after I connected a USB headset with mic. I guess Microsoft considers that an invitation to turn on some part of the Narrator functionality, which in turn triggers accessibility flags in Acrobat.

Go figure!

I followed puffykit's advice, hit "Windows-U", and turned off all aspects of Narrator. No more accessibility prompts in Acrobat.

Thanks to everyone here for the answers.

G

thank you lkassuba,

Even after I turned off the readers using the windows U option as you suggested, I was getting a major slow down where OCR wanted to run every time I moved the page position. Disabling the .api as you suggested solved this problem for me.

Dave

No, it's not a Windows problem, it's a Adobe Reader problem.

In my case renaming the files is no good. The reason is that over here the problem is caused when I happen to have the Windows Magnifier on, which I sometimes use for other programs. For Adobe Reader I do not need it because I can easily magnify the pages. The reason renaming the Accessibility.api is no good in my case is that I often use the Accessibility Preferences to Replace Document Colors. Renaming the Accessibility.api plugin disables this, so this is out of the question

So I have to accept the situation that when I start Adobe Reader I have to remember to close the Magnifier. But Adobe Reader *should* have the option not to try to read untagged documents unless you tell it to do so. I do not understand why it doesn't.

And, BTW, I wish there was a way customize the toolbar to be able to add the Replace Document Colors checkbox (or a toggle button). It would save me a lot of keystrokes.

emf

--
It ain't THAT, babe! - A radical reinterpretation
https://files.nyu.edu/emf202/public/itaintmebabe/itaintme.php

I had this problem after installing Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 by Nuance. I go rid of it by:

Edit-->Preferences-->Reading--> Uncheck "Confirm before tagging documents" under "Screen Reader Options".

The issue has been addressed on the second message of this thread. What you did was just tell Adobe Reader to go on and read the untagged document automatically, without asking you first:

"The "Reading Untagged Document" prompt indicates that Acrobat has detected assistive technology on your computer -- perhaps a screen reader or speech recognition software. Thus Acrobat/Reader is preparing the document for this device -- unfortunately without asking first.

The bad news is that you can't disable it through an Acrobat Preference setting. You can decrease the frequency via Edit --> Preferences --> Reading Panel Screen Reader options: Only read the currently visible pages."What is needed is the option *not* to read an untagged document.

emf

--
It ain't THAT, babe! - A radical reinterpretation
https://files.nyu.edu/emf202/public/itaintmebabe/itaintme.php

Renaming the plug-in files also breaks your ability to set *ANY* preferences (try it - rename one of the plug-in files and then from the menu select Edit->Preferences). So the solution that works the best is "Cripple the product"? Sad.In my case I know exactly what caused this behavior. I have a Wacom Tablet I use for graphics programs. Adobe Reader behaves fine until I install the driver for that Tablet. Once installed, Adobe Reader thinks or is being told that this is an Assistive Technology device. If I uninstall it, Reader goes back to normal.

To Wacom's credit, they have a place you can register a bug and a day later I have a technician at least trying to reproduce the problem. Kudos to Wacom.

Is anyone aware of where to log bugs with Adobe and Microsoft; I can't seem to find anywhere. Can that be right?

Anyway, in this case, either the driver is incorrectly identifying itself to the OS (Win 7 64-bit), the OS is incorrectly tagging the driver, or Reader is mis-interpreting what the OS is reporting.

And I'm stuck in the Bermuda Triangle of Adobe, Microsoft and Wacom (sigh) .....

Well, my issue seems to be resolved (or at least masked without breaking other functionality in Reader).

In Adobe Reader, I went into Edit->Preferences.In the Preferences dialog, under Screen Reader Options there is drop-down for Page vs Document. I changed that to “Only read the currently visible pages”. Then I saved and closed out.

When I reopened the document, I got a pop-up because I never saved my Assistive Technology preferences. I basically told it to use my default settings and never show me this dialog again.

It now comes up with no interference.

Go figure.

Like I said, I don’t think this actually solved the problem as much as it hides it (though it’s not scanning all the pages before opening, so on *SOME* level it solved it), but it has convinced me that this is an Adobe problem (or possibly a Microsoft problem) and not a Wacom driver issue.

If anybody has an "in" over at Adobe, please tell them to review this thread. As far as I'm concerned, this is breakage in Reader.

[b][i]And if anyone over at Adobe is reading this thread, please take note:[/i][/b]
The good folks over at Wacom busted their hump helping me debug this. All for a product I bought from them over 10 years ago.

Meanwhile Adobe doesn't even have a place to report this as a bug. I know Reader is a free product, but no one would use PDFs or buy Acrobat if only people who bought Acrobat could read PDFs.

Just because it's free doesn't mean it doesn't have to work right. Right?


03/06/10 Update -
Well, the above did not work as well as it first seemed. Yes, it stops the scan from happening everytime you open a document, but instead it happens on every page and depending on the size and complexity of the doc it can render scrolling unusable.

So I revisted renaming the plugins and I guess I was smoking crack the first time I tried this because this time it worked and I can still get into the options dialog.

This doesn't change the fact that the only workable solution is for me to essentially cripple the program and Adobe, in my thinking, still needs to address this.

JP

I have exactly the same problem after installing the software for my Wacom tablet. It's really not accurate for this topic to be marked "solved", since the only "solution" is either to cripple the program, by renaming the offending plug-ins, or to let it do its unnecessary and resource-wasting thing without asking permission.

There should be a way simply to [i]turn off[/i] the accessibility features. In fact, they shouldn't turn themselves on without permission in the first place.

It's actually rather offensive that Adobe presumes that disabled people can't decide for themselves whether or not they want its help, and automatically turns on these intrusive features--which afterwards can be made less annoying but can't be turned off--whenever it detects assistive technology on the computer!

And for Pete's sake, Adobe of all companies ought to recognize the difference between a digital drawing tablet and assistive technology for the disabled. Turning on the whole panoply of accessibility features just because a digital tablet has been installed is either presumptuous or lazy in Adobe's programmers.

How about some respect for users, and a patch?

(Oh, and Adobe people, if you read this, please make the patch work on Acrobat 7.*--I actually paid for CS2 and can't afford an upgrade.)

I am having this problem ever since installing Roboform (a password manager). It must somehow trigger or activate Windows Accessibility so I get this stupid message most times opening PDF with Adobe Professional 8.0.

However I tried renaming accessibility to Accessibilityold and readoutloud to ReadOutLoudold. I thought this fixed it, but no I stll get the same message about assistive technology to the effect of

Reading Untagged Document pop-up that says the page must be preared for reading before my assistive technology can interact with it. But none of my Windows assistive technology is activated.

Do I need to try to change the suffix on the two files mentioned above because the type of file still shows as an API. Because even when I try to add a .txt, the file type still shows as an API.

Jeffrey -

I would do exactly what Ikassuba posted earlier in this thread:

If you still have them ending in .api, the program is still probably picking them up.

Renaming the .api to .old on those two files cleared up the issue for me.

It is still, in my opinion, wrong to put users through something like this. Yeah, I'm talking to *YOU* Adobe.

I'm using Windows 7 and Acrobat Pro v9. I am not using any accessibility features. I do use a monitor plugged into my laptop when I'm in the office, and I do increase the font size on my computer screen, but that's it. Does that qualify as an accessibility feature?

Acrobat wants to process every file, adding delay to every pdf document I try to read, which is highly annoying.

I tried turning off at the Windows level per the instructions above, and it does not work. There is no "Utility Manager". There's a wizard and a number of utilities for fine-tuning the way the accessibility features work, but no way to turn them off.

I tried renaming the plugins files per instructions here, and there are THREE files by each name. I'm not sure what the distinctions are, but one has a capital initial letter and the other two do not. And despite renaming all SIX files and restarting Acrobat, it still wants to prepare my 41-page untagged file for accessibility. Arghh. This is a VERY Heavy performance drag.

Is there anything else to be done? This is really a pain.

Thanks,
Joyce

joyceg98 -

Kinda sounds like you have the Windows defaults set in Windows Explorer, so it's not showing file extensions (typical file names follow the format fileName.ext where ext is the extension); for some reason Windows doesn't think you need to see these and you wind up with multiple files that look like they have the same name but actually don't).


Go back to that directory with Windows Explorer and do the following:

In the Windows Explorer Menu, click Tools->Folder Options ...In the resulting pop-up dialog, select the View tab.

In the Advanced Settings area, scroll down till you find "Hide Extensions for Known File Types"

If that is checked, un-check it.

OK your way out. It may ask you if you want to apply this to all folders. It's not necessary, but I recommend it; this is the worst default Microsoft ships IMO.

After that, you should see that your files now have extensions after their names. Follow the instructions above and you should be fine.

From personal experience, renaming the .api files is the only option that works. The other option simply spreads the pain across every time you scroll to a new page in a PDF; that's fine if you're looking at 1 page PDFs all the time but is a real pain when you're trying to read a manual.

NOTE TO ADOBE:

FIX THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL; JUST BECAUSE IT'S FREE DOESN'T MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE TO SUPPORT IT.

Actually, the same problem applies to Adobe Professional which is an expensive pay program. So the "it's free excuse" would not even apply.

Renaming the .api files as suggested at the beginning of this thread does not work. Trying to track down what is causing Acrobat to do this is going to be too time consuming as I seem to have most of the things that have been mentioned here already on my PC.

Come on Adobe, please provide a simple option to switch this 'feature' off in Acroboat. As far as I am concerned this problem is NOT answered or resolved.

[b]Update: re-read original post and noted that the suggested rename was accessibility.api to accessibility.old. I had actually renamed to accessibility.old.api and this does not appear to have the desired effect. Renaming to accessibility.old (without the .api - and similarly for ReadOutLoud.api) appears to work. That said, I cannot believe that Adobe have not provided a simple option to switch this feature off. Anybody from Adobe care to explain the rationale behind what appears to be a piece of monumental stupidity and/or arrogance. I have wasted at least an hour on this[/b]

[b]Update to the update: spoke too soon - problem has returned again. I did allow Acrobat to install an update which may have reinstated the .api files - I haven't had time to investigate.

This is so, so annoying. Please can an option be provided which allows users to just switch this 'feature' off [/b]

Richard (Acrobat Version 9 Std - also a paid for version - unfortunately)

In that case it's up to the users of the Adobe Professional to complain and have Adobe fix the problem. Clearly you know someone who owns it: Have him/her complain directly to Adobe, if you have not done so already. There should be a way to do so.

If you can suggest another mechanism for complaining other than via this forum, then I woudl like to hear about it. I think my posting immediately above yours could not be clearer -

Richard (Acrobat 9 Std user - ie I have paid for this very annoying piece of software)

You can report bugs or feature wishes using this link: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

No, it's not a black hole - the comments you send are read.

AcrobatUsers is what it says on the tin - a user community. Yes, some of the threads are read by employees, but there's no systematic review of every post, and you won't tend to get a reply direct from the product team. We do however take many of your suggestions and frustrations into the pre-release programs, where they can and do influence the evolution of future versions. We can't and won't make any promises on a particular topic, but you are being listened to.

After recent update I found the path to the Accessibility file to have changed to:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\plug_ins

Renaming Accessibility.api to Accessiblity.old seemed to work for me.

I believe my fingerprint scanner on my laptop is causing Acrobat to go into 'accessibility' mode. It would be nice for them to rectify this for an otherwise great product.

I reported the accessibility bug to Adobe at

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/in … e=wishform



I suggest everyone else here do the same.

Have now done this but have reported it as a feature request because I think the current behaviour is deliberate - what I call designer arrogance - they think they know better than you what you want: "Ah ha: he has got a graphics tablet installed - he must need need help with accessibility - we'll automatically switch on the accessibility featues"

Here is what I said:

[i]Option to switch off accessibility scans.

At the moment if you have certain devices such as a graphics tablet installed, Acoboat will automatically scan every pdf on opening to support certain accessibility features.

This is intensely annoying and atleast 15,000 other people think similarly (the number who have viewed the thread on this topic on your forum).

Please provide a simple option to switch this feature off. At the moment, it can only be disabled either by renaming certain Acrobat components or by trying to switch off accessibility features in the operating system - both of which are time consuming and not guaranteed to work

I have already wasted 1-2 hours trying to remove this feature from Acrobat and have still not succeeded in fully disabling

It is very, very, very annoying.[/i]

Incidentally the link is https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

I found this thread several months back and changed the file name to accessibility.old and things worked fine. But when Acrobat updated in June the problem started again .... I put up with it until now, when I had to find the thread again. Thanks, UVSAR, for the link to report complaints.

Good news for you guys!
It is not needed to rename any plugin or damn your Windows or your Acrobat! Indeed, it is neither a Windows problem nor an Acrobat bug; although turning on the accessibility settings on your Windows (deliberately or unintentionally) triggers this happening--let's say a potential bug--in Acrobat which is not appreciated at all!

OK then, what's the solution:

As I had run into this problem exactly when I deliberately turned on the Windows Narrator feature, I came up with the idea of turning it off back again (as our friend puffykit has pointed it out earlier) but I didn't succeed in figuring the problem out and the problem persisted. Thus, I realized that you should simply RESTART WINDOWS to solve the mystery.

Here you may turn off all your accessibility settings, made deliberately or by any soft/hardware, to get rid of the problem (BUT DON'T FORGET TO RESTART YOUR WINDOWS AFTER MAKING YOUR CHANGES!):

Go to Start> All Programs> Accessories> Ease of Access (or Accessibility> Utility Manager), or simply press Windows+U, then stop or turn off every accessibility settings you see; narrator, magnifier.. That's it!