NVDA issues with SL360 modules exported to Word, then PDF

Hello community!

I’ve been working on producing an accessible set of PDFs exported from Word docs that were generated from two Storyline 360 courses. I’ve done a bit of research into components that I can edit in Word to publish an accessible PDF and have implemented these solutions, but I’m running into a couple of odd issues:

• NVDA doesn’t read the entire paragraph in a Notes section seamlessly: I find that I have to keep pressing the Arrow Down key for NVDA to read the Notes text, and it does so line by line rather than one seamless para. I can see where this could be an annoyance for a learner, but I’m not sure how to remediate it. When I open the doc in Word and have NVDA read the para from Word, this isn’t an issue. I’ve learned that styles are very important for tagging and bookmarking purposes in accessible PDFs, so I made sure that all para (not heading) text was formatted as Normal style and republished, but this didn’t fix the issue.
• NVDA is capturing a “Blank” object in between reading the slide title and the Storyline screenshot beneath it: In between the second-level heading (the slide title in the PDF) and the slide screenshot is a weird “Blank” that seems to be looking for a blank object below (or inside) the screenshot. I looked in the Word doc to see if I could detect an invisible frame around or inside the screenshot, but no luck. I had been thinking that possibly the hard page breaks I’d placed on some pages to cause the H2 to appear at the top of each page (these page breaks were not always needed) were the culprit, but NVDA doesn’t treat pages WITH page breaks at the beginning any differently than pages with headings/screenshots that wrap to a subsequent page “naturally.” Not sure how to fix this as I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but it’s a slightly annoying interruption in the text flow.

Have any of you encountered these issues when publishing from Word to PDF? If so, were you able to find and fix these issues within Word? Unluckily, I don’t have Acrobat Pro or InDesign, so I’m unable to fix these issues using those programs. I could reach out to a more senior employee with these programs to see if they could assist, but I'd much rather fix the issue without having to bother anyone if at all possible. :)

Thanks much in advance.