Jaws focus issues when reading a PDF

By Dave Nason, 7 April, 2024

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Forum
Windows

Hi all.
I'm trying to read a PDF document and also take notes.
The document is open in Microsoft Edge, and I'm taking notes in a Word doc. However, every time I Alt Tab back to to PDF document after typing a note, Jaws focus is jumping back to the top of the PDF.
Is there anything I can do to stop this, and have it just land where I left off?
Cheers,
Dave

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Comments

By Joshua on Friday, April 5, 2024 - 16:21

It doesn’t have this problem for me

By Tara on Friday, April 5, 2024 - 16:21

Hi Dave,
I've just tried moving from a complex PDF document I have and back to Word with various browsers and screen reader combinations, and the best solution I've found is to use NVDA with Edge. When I try JAWS with Edge, the same thing keeps happening to me as it does to you. NVDA and Edge seem to be the only way of dealing with this, especially when dealing with a pretty big document. I think the document I was trying this on is about 300 pages long with links for a table of contents and so on.

By Dave Nason on Friday, April 5, 2024 - 16:21

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Thanks guys.
I may have accidentally stumbled upon another solution too. It seems that if I select some text in the PDF document before moving away, it is holding my place. Will test some more 🤞
Dave

By Travis Roth on Sunday, April 7, 2024 - 16:21

I find the focus issue happens a lot not just in PDFs although those can be the worst. The best friend, albeit an extra step, is to set a temporary placemarker with Ctrl+Windows+k. And return to it with k.

By Dave Nason on Sunday, April 7, 2024 - 16:21

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Thanks Travis. I didn’t know about that feature.
God I hate PDFs though, I shudder every time I receive one!
Dave

By Brian on Sunday, April 21, 2024 - 16:21

Hi,

Since someone mentioned NVDA, I thought I would toss in my 2 cents. NVDA has an amazing add-on called 'Nao'. It is an amazing tool for PDF files.

When you use it, and for lack of a better description, it lets you navigate the PDF like a Word document. There are also a number of additional features you can perform while reading a PDF with Nao, such as searching for a word or phrase, saving the document to different formats, hotkeys to hear what page or line you are on, etc.

It also can OCR images within the PDF!

If you enjoy NVDA, check out Nao below. 😀

https://nvda-nao.org/