[blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Tue Jul 21 21:10:47 UTC 2015

This may be a non-starter, but I have at times turned to a program called Nuance Power PDF Advanced. It does a pretty good job of doing OCR on inaccessible PDF's, and it isn't nearly as expensive as, say, Kurzweil 1000. I think it costs around $100. If your agency is unwilling to make such a minimal expenditure or assign you a license for Adobe PDF Pro, would they at least allow you to buy it yourself and install it on your computer? Obviously, this would be less than ideal, but it may be an option.
All Best,
James

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 21, 2015, at 5:06 PM, Susan Kelly via blindlaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> My agency only purchased two licenses for Adobe Pro - neither of which is assigned to me, unfortunately, so I can't do that.  If we ever get to the point that I have a license on my computer, or the clerks doing the processing of disclosure materials for trial cases have time to do that, it sounds like a great option.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of ALBERT ELIA via blindlaw
> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 1:32 PM
> To: Blind Law Mailing List
> Cc: ALBERT ELIA
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet
> 
> This is going to sound stupid, but if you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, try opening the PDF in Pro and saving it with accessibility options checked. If it is already checked, try unchecking it, saving, re-opening, and re-checking it. I had this problem with some of my publisher-provided textbooks in law school, and this trick sometimes worked.
> 
> The other option, if that doesn't work, might be to open the PDF, print it to a new PDF, and then OCR that second PDF. That should mimic your print/scan/OCR procedure, just without the actual printing and scanning.
> 
> Good luck.
> 
> 
>> On Jul 21, 2015, at 1:13 PM, Susan Kelly via blindlaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 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, despit
> e 
>> 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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