r/Acrobat

I work for a government agency and we’re currently making sure our exported PDFs meet ADA accessibility requirements, including compatibility with screen readers.

My coworker and I are running into inconsistent results when testing the same remediated PDFs using NVDA with Acrobat.

On my computer:
Some tables cause Acrobat to crash.
NVDA reads the content in a different order than what’s shown in Acrobat.
If I close and reopen the file, I sometimes get different results, for example, NVDA grouping two headings together and announcing them as a graphic when they aren’t.

On my coworker’s computer:
They don’t experience the crashes or heading issues.
Instead, all images are read at the very end of the document.

We’ve confirmed we’re using the same versions of Acrobat and NVDA with matching settings. I also reinstalled NVDA to rule out a corrupted install, but I’m still seeing the same behavior.

We’ve also gone through our accessibility checklist in InDesign, confirming tags are set up correctly, the Layers and Articles panels are in the proper order, and that everything appears ADA compliant in both InDesign and Acrobat.

Has anyone experienced this kind of inconsistency between machines? Any recommendations for NVDA settings or PDF testing best practices?

Thanks in advance!

Subject: Accessibility issue with Burmese (Myanmar) – Character encoding error in Acrobat

Hello,

We are currently working on a file translated into Burmese (Myanmar) that requires accessibility remediation for screen readers.

The files are being processed in Adobe InDesign 2026. The translated text was copied from a Word file after first being pasted into Notepad to remove any potential hidden formatting or encoding characters.

The following settings and checks have already been completed:

A Unicode font that fully supports Burmese characters is being used.

World-Ready Paragraph Composer is enabled.

The correct language is assigned at text level.

Legacy Text Shaping for Adobe World-Ready Composer is enabled.

The file is being exported as a tagged PDF with the correct document language assigned.

Despite all these settings being correctly applied, Acrobat’s accessibility checker continues to report a character encoding error for the Burmese text.

 

Could you please advise if Burmese (Myanmar) has any known limitations with Acrobat accessibility validation, or if there are additional settings required for proper Unicode character mapping in tagged PDFs?

Thank you in advance.

Adobe Acrobat has officially become unusable. I am staring at a spinning wheel on a massive legal filing because Adobe decided my PDF editor needs to be an AI experience instead of a functional tool. They hid basic professional features like redaction and page management behind endless new menus just to push a permanent AI sidebar that keeps asking to summarize my brief. I do not need a summary. I need to file this today. The software is so bloated it crashes under the weight of features no one asked for. I am paying a premium subscription for a program that is actively sabotaging my work. Is there a heavy duty alternative that stays local and actually works? Or am I stuck hunting down an old version of Acrobat just to keep my sanity? What do you guys think?

EDIT: I searched online and I found that there are old versions of acrobat made by adobe itself, and provided by some sellers. I grabbed an acrobat dc 2024 lifetime subscription key with a cheap price. Google adobe keypunch to take a look if you're interested. These older versions do not have this ai of shit!

Hello!

In Acrobat Pro, upon Auto-Tagging the document and then running the Accessibility Check, my document was flagged for failing character encoding, specific to only one character in the entire document.

This is happening only with one symbol, a symbol for square root (or the 'radical' math symbol).

In the Accessibility Checker, when then clicking on 'Word 1' to try to fix, I have no 'Fix' option. All I can select are 'Skip Rule' (this strikes me as not great for accessibility, as everything else has passed each criterion).

Neither Explain selection, nor any Googling, has helped me come up with a way to pass this character encoding issue.

I am conducting this check on someone else's already-completed and submitted PDF, so I technically am not supposed to re-type/re-form the actual text or even fonts in editing mode (I also know it's not a font issue, as the font is used elsewhere in the document; for some reason, the character symbol itself is at issue).

In the Tags panel, when I isolate the container and find the character therein, it appears as a black-box with a question mark inside, rather than the square-root symbol it should be.

In another document with a very similar issue, the same failure happens, but here, I can see the square-root symbol in the Tags panel showing as an L with a line through it ("Ł") instead of the math symbol it should be. It also reads as "Ł" in the Content panel in the second document.

Is there any way to pass this check via the Tags or Content panels? Any other workarounds or advice to pass this check without re-typing/forming the author's submission?

Thank you!!

adobe acrobat. you are trying to do too much with one software. its slow. its difficult to understand. file size is always too large. i work with PDFs all the time, so I am not a beginner. My suggestion - could you just simplify. its like you are trying to create a drawing software on top of the PDF software. I am an architect, we have CAD, we export to PDF to digital share, or print and share. I don't need it to write or draw or measure or anything. I understand other professions use it to make forms, and sign documents... so I get it. and take this comment as a grain of salt. I am sure its a user error. But I don't think i am alone in feeling frustrated at this clunky program. my solution: stop trying to do everything adobe PDF and just focus on making a PDF that is easy to share digitally.

I had Adobe Acrobat DC on my cpu for years and it worked perfectly fine with pretty much all the features I needed. I made the mistake of downloading the newer 64-bit Acrobat version because I needed Fill & Sign, and it completely overwrote my old DC version and now wants subscriptions for features I previously had access to.

I’ve since uninstalled the new version, but I cannot for the life of me find my original Acrobat DC installer/version to reinstall. Any advice or assistance would be greatly appreciated!

I am currently in the process of getting my first book printed, and when I received the eproof I noticed the interior pages were cropped too much. I rejected the eproof, explaining the problem, and they got back to me saying that the pdf file I sent is 9 x 13 inches, and it needs to be 5.25 x 8 inches. I've tried fixing it in Adobe Acrobat, but the instructions on how to change the size/format of a document are outdated, and I've tried pretty much everything I can think of on Pages and on the pdf and nothing seems to successfully change the format. Does anyone know how to change this? I use Pages for writing but I am willing to try other platforms.

My Acrobat auto-updated overnight to their terrible new interface. Every tool I use daily is hidden behind extra menus or completely moved. I reverted to the old UI for now, but Adobe is removing that option entirely soon. I am sick of paying a premium monthly subscription for software that constantly changes and gets worse. I need a stable, one-time purchase desktop app for basic editing and organizing pages that doesn't constantly ruin my workflow. Yet sometimes (not often) I rely on industrial OCR and true redaction, which basic editors usually fail at. What is everyone using?

Edit: I actually already solved my issue by grabbing a volume key for acrobat dc 2024 online (google adobe keypunch if you are interested). It gives me the full Acrobat offline processing power for heavy OCR and redaction.