[blindlaw] Internal Office Procedure for Making Documents Accessible to Screen Readers

[Tai Tomasi]

Hello all. I am blind and just began working as a staff attorney for Disability Rights Iowa. I use the JAWS for Windows screen reader. I am interested to know your internal office protocols for making scanned legal documents accessible to your blind employees who use screen readers. This usually involves some sort of text tagging or OCR (optical character recognition).
I envision an office in which all documents are eventually electronically accessible and ultimately searchable by all employees. The PDFs produced by my office scanner/copier are inaccessible, necessitating the extra step of running them through scanning software myself. Blind attorneys, how do you handle this? My employer is very willing to accommodate, but I am not sure what to recommend, given they know little about these advanced technology issues. I would like to correspond off list regarding detailed procedures (i.e. software, hardware, and recommended settings) for remedying this problem, as I need to give them to our copier and tech support companies who know nothing about adaptive technology. My state department for the blind says I need to work directly with the copier company. Your input is appreciated.

Best regards,

Tai Tomasi, J.D.
Staff Attorney

[Description: DR%20IA%20LawCenter]

400 East Court Ave., Ste. 300
Des Moines, Iowa 50309
Tel: 515-278-2502; Toll Free: 1-800-779-2502
FAX: 515-278-0539; Relay 711
E-mail: tomasi at driowa.org<mailto:tomasi at driowa.org>
www.driowa.org

Our Mission:  To defend and promote the human and legal rights of Iowans with disabilities

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

This e-mail and any attachments contain information from the law firm of Disability Rights Iowa and are intended solely for the use of the named recipient(s). This e-mail may contain privileged attorney-client communications or work product. Any dissemination by anyone other than an intended recipient is prohibited. If you are not a named recipient, you are prohibited from any further viewing of the e-mail or any attachments or from making any use of the e-mail or attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, notify the sender immediately and delete the e-mail, any attachments, and all copies from any drives or storage media and destroy any printouts.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3845 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindlaw_nfbnet.org/attachments/20160121/25acd49a/attachment.jpg>