[blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Tue Jul 21 19:06:03 UTC 2015

Steve -

Thanks so much for the insights on Adobe - not repeats, and very helpful.  I will check to see what we are allowed as users to change - like I said, the network policy is somewhat draconian around here, and even then, does not keep things running well.  I will definitely try to change what I can to see if it improves things.

I have mentioned purchasing a different OCR program many times to the powers that be - unfortunately, the latest comment I got was "nothing is perfect" and that I should have my assistant read inaccessible / problematic documents to me instead, the standard code language for nothing else will be done to improve the situation.

Susan

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Steve Jacobson via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 11:02 AM
To: 'Blind Law Mailing List'
Cc: Steve Jacobson
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Susan,

I am sorry if this has already been mentioned, but some of the settings that need to be changed are in Adobe Acrobat and not within JAWS.  For example, there is a setting that determines if an entire document will be made available to JAWS or whether it will be broken into pages.  In general, if you tell Adobe to always make the entire document available at once to the JAWS Virtual Cursor, you probably can't take advantage of bookmarks set in the PDF which can be useful on large documents if they are used.  Second, there are several reading order options within Adobe.  If it is not already specified, sometimes telling Adobe to "read left to right, top to bottom"
rather than to "infer reading order from Document" you can have better results.  Whether these options help or not is not something I can know, though.

Finally, if nothing above has worked or can work for you, you certainly don't need to be printing out the entire document and rescanning it.  OCR programs like OmniPage and FineReader contain logic that will go in and get the text from PDF's and I believe they will grab text without doing OCR if it is available.  Kurzweil 1000 will also create a virtual printer that will let you print out a PDF and then have it recognized by  Kurzweil 1000.
Finally, Nuance, the company that makes OmniPage, also has specific PDF software that is supposed to let you convert PDF's to Word for example.  The version that I have used in the past that came with OmniPage did pretty well.  

I hope something here is helpful, but I'm sorry if you've heard it all before.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kelly via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 12:45 PM
To: 'Blind Law Mailing List'
Cc: Susan Kelly
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Been there, done that, unfortunately.  Our ADA officer is very helpful, but he has no authority over the courts because of how are county is run, and seemingly very limited power over our county IT, the new director of which made a very discriminatory comment in front of an entire roomful of people present for a meeting on the subject of the network and machinery last month.  In fact, the ADA rep thinks I may have to resort to litigation to get compliance from the multiple players involved, which I can neither afford in terms of money or time.  In the meantime, my work is still due, so I am trying to find other ways to handle this.

I will let you all know if anything improves, though!

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Reyazuddin, Yasmin via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 10:24 AM
To: Blind Law Mailing List
Cc: Reyazuddin, Yasmin
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Hi Susan,
I would talk with the ADA compliance officer in the county. Make them aware of inaccessible documents. I know that section 508 applies to federal government but some counties do want to follow it. Website accessibility is now part of the ADA compliance. Check the new document on the website.
www.ada.gov has a new document on state & local government guidelines. 

Let us know if you have success. 
Yasmin Reyazuddin
Aging & Disability Services
Montgomery County Government
Department of Health & Human Services
401 Hungerford Drive (3rd floor)
Rockville MD 20850
240-777-0311 (MC311)
240-777-1556 (personal)
240-777-1495 (fax)
office hours 8:30 am 5:00 pm
Languages English, Hindi, Urdu, Braille 

This message may contain protected health information or other information that is confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by return mail and destroy any copies of this material. 

Thank you.

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kelly via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 1:13 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List; (gui-talk at nfbnet.org)
Cc: Susan Kelly
Subject: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Apologies in advance for this cross-list posting, but I am desperate to find some workable answers.

I am a county public defender whose duties include juvenile appeals.  The court websites in our county are of varying levels of accessibility, and even within those varying levels, more differences are permitted to exist because the court clerks all have different methods and standards.  When it comes to transcripts filed in the court of appeals, individual reporters upload their documents to the COA in the manner they see fit.  This will generally be in a PDF format, but it is generated by one of two proprietary programs available to them through the state office of the courts to generate written documents from stenographic notes.  These programs contain bizarre coding that, when the PDF is created within the program (as opposed to being scanned physically from printed paper) somehow is embedded in the PDF.  This causes everything from tiny blocks of the page being read in a non-sensical, patchwork fashion, to reading halting at the end of each page of the document, despite  the settings within JAWS for a continuous reading experience.

So far, the only even semi-effective route around this that we have found is to physically print out the transcripts, scan them on our already over-worked scanner, and then to run them through our equally taxed OCR program, which ironically is also provided by Adobe.  Neither a print-to-PDF followed by OCR of the document nor the OCR program in JAWS itself is effective on our network for this task, thanks to peculiarities of the county network environment.  I do not have the luxury of purchasing any new or different equipment; even if I did, IT likely would not allow it to be run on "their" network.

All that being said, is there a quicker / easier solution that I am missing?
I have changed the JAWS settings countless times, to no avail, which may also be a function of our network environment.

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