NVDA Screen Reader is reading text boxes marked as decorative in PowerPoint slide shows.

Question

I marked multiple objects as decorative in a PPT, and the NVDA screen readers still read them. This impacts the ability to make them Section 508 compliant.

Answer 1

Hi Mark Hamrick

Thank you for reaching out and for raising this important concern regarding NVDA's behavior when interacting with decorative objects in PowerPoint.  We completely understand your interest in ensuring accessibility compliance and truly appreciate the attention to detail you're applying to this matter. However, we would like to clarify that this forum may not be the most appropriate place to address issues specific to NVDA. As NVDA is an open-source screen reader developed independently, we currently do not have the dedicated testing environment or in-depth technical expertise to provide authoritative guidance on its internal behavior. 

Based on our research, this appears to be a known limitation within the NVDA community. Specifically, objects marked as decorative in PowerPoint may still be read aloud by NVDA, particularly during manual navigation or interaction. This behavior has been discussed in several forums and issue trackers, which we’ve included below for your reference: 

• GitHub issue on decorative object handling: NVDA GitHub #13422 
• NVDA community discussion: Groups.io thread 

For more accurate and timely support, we recommend reaching out directly through the NVDA user community at: https://www.nvaccess.org/community/ 

We hope these resources will be helpful in further understanding the issue.  

Note: Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. The sites are not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. Please make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any suggestions from the above link 

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