For anyone who reads scholarly texts frequently, as I do, footnotes are commonplace. Given a document received in Microsoft Word format, I sought to access the footnotes using several word processors and screen readers. Findings:
Microsoft Word for Windows (Print layout) - the footnotes appear at the bottom of each page and can be reached using ordinary cursor navigation. An option to move from the footnote text to the footnote mark in the body of the document is available in a context menu. However, I couldn't find a command to move from the footnote mark directly to the footnote text.
Microsoft Word for Mac - VoiceOver didn't read the footnote text at all - not good, obviously.
Apple Pages - each footnote mark was treated as a link, so I could navigate directly to the footnote text. However, there was no obvious way to move back from the footnote text to the footnote mark.
Google Docs - I haven't tested recently, but when I last tried it with multiple screen readers under different operating systems, the screen readers ignored the footnote marks in the document entirely, unless the cursor was placed directly on the footnote mark, which is unlikely to happen by accident.
LibreOffice Writer (Linux) - when last I tested, there wasn't a keyboard binding for the command to move to the footnote area. I reported this as a bug. It may have been fixed since then.
