Have you tried reading the document streight off in adobi? or maybe the sapi reading options? You can find them under "read out loud" which is in the view menu (you can also set things like voice and speed under options

supernova isn't bad at reading pdf documents in adobi reader itself these days, though i still tend to prefer to use the "save as text" option where possible just because it's much easier to skip through. Of course there are also those bloody annoying pdfs that just don't come out in propper layout whatever the heck you do, unfortunately the King of Dragon pass manual is one of these, while that's not a complete disaster as it is available in the game itself I would've liked a pc copy to check stuff in occasionally.

Really Pdfs are bloody annoying, even though they're less anoying these days than they used to be.

Well Socheat, be glad you didn't have to tangle with pdfs back in the early 2000's, back then they were pretty much universally inaccessible sinse even save to text often produced something so garbled it was unreadable, there were no sapi options and the text in pdfs themselves were virtually unreadable even if they actually contained! text and weren't just images pretending to be text.

They're still a pain in the rear, but really access to them has actually improved quite significantly.

Are you sure there is actual text on the document? ie, can you read it with your screen reader? The only time I encountered one of those locked pdfs previously I did find I could read it in adobe normally  either with supernova or with read outloud.

I'd also check youre read outloud option is working sinse I did have an instance once (actually with the manual to Treasures of a slaver's kingdom), where it utterly died on me for some reason and kept telling me it kept giving me errors about having no voice and the only way to fix that was to reinstall the bugger.

Aaron, I don't know what you mean about "there is definitely text but the screen reader can't read it"

if you just open the document in adobe and start reading with your screen reader what happens?

if the document has text you should be able to at least read it without the access options using either normal methods or read out loud.. If according to your screen reader or read out loud the thing is blank, then you have no real text there, ie, no actual txt to read and it wouldn't matter even if you could copy and paste or use the convert to accessible txt format sinse you'd just get a blank document.

This is what I mean when I say "an immage" it is a case where someone has literally photographed a peace of text and stuck that photograph as a pdf. To sighted people this makes no difference at all sinse  whether they're looking at an image of text or real honest to ascii txt wouldn't matter, but obviously for a screen reader it's a different story.

I've unfortunately seen not a few official documents that do this and it's yet another reason why pdfs are a pain in the arse.