[nabs-l] Reading PDF Documents with JAWS

David Andrews dandrews at visi.com
Mon Sep 19 01:17:18 UTC 2011


If it says "blank document," it generally means that the PDF contains 
an image of the text, not the text itself.  The only way to read this 
is to do OCR or optical character recognition on the file or a printout of it.

Dave

At 08:11 PM 9/18/2011, you wrote:
>Thanks all.  I have tried this various avenues which haven't worked.
>I have the program mentioned and when it opened it said blank
>document.  I agree that PDFs aren't fun.
>
>Oh well.
>
>Thanks again!
>Justin
>
>On 9/18/11, Nicole B. Torcolini at Home <ntorcolini at wavecable.com> wrote:
> > Okay, for clarification, if a PDF is not accessible, it is not accessible.
> > There are only certain types of PDF's that you can have JAWS read 
> or save as
> > text or copy and paste. If it is accessible but protected, then 
> you can read
> > it with JAWS, but you cannot copy and paste it. If it is one of those PDF's
> > that is a graphic of text, then there is no saving it as text or 
> copying and
> > pasting it.
> >
> > Nicole
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Amy Sabo" <amylsabo at comcast.net>
> > To: "'National Association of Blind Students mailing list'"
> > <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> > Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 5:34 PM
> > Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Reading PDF Documents with JAWS
> >
> >
> >> Hello Justin,
> >>
> >> Have you tried selecting the entire document and then doing a
> >> copy and paste into ms word? Or also saving the pdf document as a
> >> txt document and, then opening it in notepad or in ms word? I
> >> have used these techniques that have worked unless the pdf
> >> document is tagged... take care and good luck!
> >>
> >>
> >> Hugs,
> >> amy
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org
> >> [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Justin Young
> >> Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 12:34 PM
> >> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> >> Subject: [nabs-l] Reading PDF Documents with JAWS
> >>
> >> Hello All,
> >>
> >> Hope you are doing well.  I have a question for you.  In my
> >> experience
> >> with pdf files it seems like JAWS is selective in which it wishes
> >> to
> >> read and those it wishes not to read.  Have any others
> >> experienced
> >> this?  How do we get the ones that don't want to be read to do
> >> so?  I
> >> must admit I don't know much about PDFs.
> >>
> >> Any suggestions, ideas, comments are appreciated.
> >>
> >> Justin





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