1723421 - [XFA] Headings not exposed for accessibility

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: PDF Viewer, defect, P1)

Description

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

STR (with the NVDA screen reader):

1. Open this PDF in Firefox: https://bug1671648.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9182033
2. Wait a few seconds for the first page to load.
3. Press control+home to ensure you are at the top of the document.
4. Press h to move to the next heading.
   • Expected: NVDA should say "APPLICATION FOR VISITOR VISA (TEMPORARY RESIDENT VISA) heading level 1"
   • Actual: NVDA says "no next heading"

Semantic headings make it much easier for screen reader users to know that a piece of text is a heading (rather than having to guess based on context), as well as making it much more efficient to navigate between sections.

I'm not sure how XFA encodes this information, but it is exposed correctly in Acrobat Reader. Pdf.js could expose this by using the attributes role="heading" aria-level="n", where n is the heading level.

Comment 1

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/pull/13873

Comment 2

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub master push: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/commit/d7e1a419c2cf51df78026ebb6ec4e6cb6d904ba6

Commit merged into master by GitHub
Authored by Brendan Dahl (brendandahl)

Comment 3

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

:bdahl, now that bug 1724461 is closed, can this be closed as well? That is, is there any reason this fix wouldn't have been included in that update?

Comment 4

[Jonas Jenwald [:Snuffleupagus]]

(In reply to James Teh [:Jamie] from comment #3)

That is, is there any reason this fix wouldn't have been included in that update?

The patch landed in bug 1724461, let's just close this one as fixed :-)

Comment 5

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I have verified the fix using the steps above in Windows 10 with NVDA.
Furthermore, I have also verified the fix in MacOS 11 with VoiceOver by using hotkey VO + CMD + H for next heading command.
Also verified in Ubuntu 20 with ORCA by using the H key to jump to the next heading.

All PDF headings (Levels 1, 2 and 3) are exposed and correctly read by all three Screen Readers.