[BlindTlk] Pdf files

[Humberto Avila]

Hello Jamelle,


I would say that not all .PDF files are fillable with a screen reader. 
There are 3 types of PDFs in this world. the first one is the super 
awesome one where you can use your commands like E (for edit box), F 
(for formfield), X (for checkbox), and so forth. This is the most 
accessible way to fill in a PDF form and many times, sadly, PDFs don't 
usually come that way. Which leads me to the second type of PDF which is 
the one that allows you to read everything on the document, but there's 
no formfields to fill out even though there are underscors and lines 
that you can fill out, technically a sighted person can printout and 
fill out.

My third type of PDF is the one no screen reader user likes, at all, and 
which there are so many of them circulating around, and this is the 
ugly, unreadable, stress-inducing, inaccessible image pdf. this is the 
type where someone just takes a picture of printed pages with whatever 
it is, or puts pages through a photocopier, and then generates a PDF of 
that. UGHGHGH 🥹

So, anyways, going back to your question, depending on what kind of PDF 
it is, you may be able to work it out and we can help you with. One 
thing I do with either the second or third type of PDF files is to use 
the JAWS OCR functionality which allows me to convert the file into an 
accessible .DOCS Microsoft Word document. that way, I can manipulate it, 
format it, and fill out any forms within, print it, and even put my 
signature inline as a graphic in the document! the only tradeoff is that 
yes, as someone else mentioned -- you'll lose the formatting of the 
original document and I have had experiences where I fill out a form 
that I feel I did it right and then they tell me that they can't accept 
it because it's not the originally formated document.


So yeah...... hope this helps a bit.


On 6/7/2023 7:00 PM, Jamelle via BlindTlk wrote:
> Hello,
>
> So I wanted to ask the list a question. How to fill out a Pdf file?
>
> Thank you for your help in advance,
>
> P.s.
>
> I'm using jaws 2019 and firefox.
>
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