Accessibility and Text-to-Speech

This page is outdated. Accessibility support is not complete and therefore disabled.

SumatraPDF prerelease supports experimental UIA accessibility API, which allows for example screen readers to read out loud the selected text in document.

Accessibility in SumatraPDF plugin #

Accessibility features are considered experimental and accessibility is not enabled at the moment in the SumatraPDF plugin.

Usage #

Microsoft Narrator #

Start Microsoft Narrator
Start SumatraPDF
Open document in SumatraPDF
Select text. Microsoft Narrator will now read out the selected text.

Known issue: Sometimes Narrator does not read the selection. This seems to be a focus related problem and selecting another window and then back the SumatraPDF window may fix the problem.

Supported configurations #

Supported file types #

PDF, XPS, DjVu

Supported Clients #

Microsoft Narrator

Unsupported Clients #

NVDA

Technical Documentation #

This section is documentation for SumatraPDF and other developers.

UIAutomation element structure when a document is loaded #

Window
 |-> FragmentRoot
     Name: "Canvas"
     ControlType: UIA_CustomControlTypeId
      |
      |-> Fragment
          Name: [filename]
          ControlType: UIA_DocumentControlTypeId 
          NativeWindowHandle: 0
          Patterns: ITextProvider
            |
            | -> Fragment
            |    Name: "Page 1"
            |    Patterns: IValueProvider
            -
            -
            |
            | -> Fragment
                 Name: "Page n"
                 Patterns: IValueProvider

UIAutomation element structure when no document is loaded #

Window
 |-> FragmentRoot
     Name: "Canvas"
     ControlType: UIA_CustomControlTypeId
      |
      |-> Fragment
          Name: "Start Page"