OT--PDF Read Out Loud problem

[Carol J. Elkins]

After I emailed this yesterday, I tested the PDF on my laptop (also 
running Acrobat 11 Pro on Windows 7), and the Read Out Loud function 
works fine. So the problem must be with the Acrobat installation on 
my desktop CPU. I've run the Repair feature to no avail. It isn't 
worth uninstalling and reinstalling Acrobat since I can accomplish 
the task on my laptop.

However, one of the folks who kindly responded to me off-list made 
some comments about PDF accessibility that I'm interested in seeing 
discussed. She wrote: "I am noticing a major flag in your post: "were 
created in Acrobat Distiller 11 using the default Press job option 
settings". You have a few things against you... Distiller should not 
be used when creating accessible documents. Files should be converted 
to PDF. It may sound confusing, but the PDF created by PS Distiller 
is very different than converted one. Acrobat Read Out Loud is very 
rudimentary and you really should not use it for testing your document. "

Since I am of the School of Dov Isaacs and always print to postscript 
and then distill to get my PDFs, the idea that I shouldn't distill to 
get accessible PDFs is new to me. What are other people's thoughts?

Carol

____________________________________________
Last July, I posted this question to the Acrobat Community and got 
nowhere. So I'm asking here in hope that I can find someone who has 
had this problem and was able to fix it.

I'm using Acrobat XI Pro (fully updated to 11.0.05) on Windows7 
(fully patched). When I try to use the Read Out Loud feature on a 
PDF, Acrobat shuts down. I am able to turn on (activate) the Read Out 
Loud feature, but when I select Read to End of Page or Read This 
Document, Acrobat crashes. PDFs are version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x). They 
were created in Acrobat Distiller 11 using the default Press job 
option settings. The documents are 100% accessible and are fully tagged.

I have been unable to use Read Out Loud since I upgraded from Acrobat 
9 Pro last January. I've read dozens of articles on "how to prepare 
your PDFs for accessibility" but this PDF is straight text--no 
tables, captions, etc. Just text. No complicated reading order. So 
for the life of me I can't figure out what to do to get the thing to 
read to me. I never had a problem before Acrobat 11 and I've never 
had to "do" anything to prepare the PDF.

Help!

Carol