How to get screen reader to read headings and text in accessible form

Question

Hi
We're trying to build an accessible form using Designer 7.0.
When the user tabs to a text field, radio button, combo, etc, the reader (in this case, Windows XP default "Narrator") correctly reads out the widget's caption and current value.
However, it skips any of the text between widgets, such as headings and explanatory text - even though these do actually have a valid tab order within the document.
Is there any way to tell Adobe Reader to either:
a) Tab to "text" fields as well as to data entry widgets
b) Read out surrounding text when you tab to a data entry widget.
c) Anything else that will help end-users to understand the "context" in which they have to enter a piece of data.
Many thanks,
Howard

Answer 1

I played with this a bit to see what could be done. I think this will become more of an issue of whether there is functionality in Narator that will let you do this.
Firstly, it is not possible to have Reader tab to a static text field. Regardless of whether it's defined in the tab order it won't happen.
In Narator I wasn't able to get it to read off static text. Using JAWS it had the functionality that you can use the arrows keys to read off text lines around the current cursor position by pressing up and down. So by doing that it did read the static text.
Only way I could see to get it to happen in Narator was to use a read only text field. But it wasn't great, since when Narator reads it out it explicitly specifies that it's a readonly text field instead of just reading the text.
Chris
Adobe Enterprise Developer Support