[blindLaw] Some questions on accessing a particular type of PDF as a blind law student

[Abhishek Dhol]

Hi,



1.       My name is Abhishek Dhol. I am a blind person and a user of the
Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) screen-reader.

2.       I am currently in my second year of law school in the United
Kingdom, at Queen Mary University of London.

3.       I have encountered a PDF document which, when opened, says it is
“secured”, and therefore, can’t be accessed by a screen-reader, such as
NVDA.

4.       My institution subscribes to the PDF convertor software package
SensusAccess, which I normally use to convert inaccessible PDFs.

5.       I suspected that it would be impossible for SensusAccess to
convert this PDF, but I still tried.

6.       I got an error message, saying that it wasn’t possible to convert
this document.

7.       As this was a journal article, I was able to find an alternative
version online, using JStor. However, in another situation, this solution
may not work. Is anybody on this mailing list aware of methods to convert
such “secured” documents into screen-reader accessible ones?

8.       Alternatively, is there a setting which could be changed within
the PDF itself?



Thank you very much, in advance, for your time and assistance.



Regards,



Abhishek Dhol