[nabs-l] PDF Files

[Cindy Bennett]

Hi Hannah,

Most of the PDF's that I use are accessible through Adobe's
accessibility feature. For me, it comes up automatically when I open a
PDF, but it is under the accessibility tab under the edit menu. There
are a series of boxes, but I just keep the recommended settings, and
Adobe does an OCR. I will say that although it is pretty successful
with text, tables and graphics are messy.

Most commonly, I have a problem with Adobe combining strings of words
with no spaces or not interpreting a page that has multiple columns as
such and so I hear paragraphs out of order. Also, I have found that
hand scanned in documents cannot be read well by the Adobe OCR.

In this case, I use Kerzweil which is an OCR software. There are
others such as ABBYY Fine Reader. A good OCR option can be considered
a reasonable accommodation if your state has something comparable to a
Division of Services for the Blind, so funding is typically available
for it.

I do not know how to use the OCR function of JAWS 14.

One workaround would be to see if you can find the file somewhere
else. For example, professors would sometimes give out readings from
journals and I could find accessible versions on my library's website.
If they are excerpts from novels, you could look on websites such as
bookshare.

That being said, I am not well versed at OCR options that are good
with math, foreign languages, or any subject with symbols. I think
there is a math solution called Infinty Reader, but this may be for
textbook scanning.

Cindy

On 11/3/13, Hannah Chadwick <sparklylicious at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello list,
> I'm currently using Jaws 14 with my windows 7 pc. It seems that a lot of
> documents, especially academic ones are in pdf files. I was just wondering
> how you read these file types? I've been converting most of them in to word
> files, however when I do, they become very messy. I look forward to your
> responses.
> Best, Hannah chadwick
> University of California, Davis CA
>
>
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-- 
Cindy Bennett
Secretary: National Association of Blind Students

B.A. Psychology, UNC Wilmington
clb5590 at gmail.com