[nabs-l] PDF Files

Tue Nov 5 02:44:25 UTC 2013

I don't believe convenient OCR was in JAWS that far back.  I think it 
came in around version 12.

Dave

At 05:38 PM 11/4/2013, you wrote:
>Hi Shickeytha!
>What would the key commands be for Jaws 10, which I still have?
>Thanks, Joshua
>________________________________________
>From: nabs-l [nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] on behalf of Shickeytha 
>Chandler [shickeytha at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 5:23 PM
>To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>Subject: Re: [nabs-l] PDF Files
>
>Hannah,
>
>The others who have responded have some good ideas-actually some that
>I wasn't aware of and am going to look into for my own use. But have
>you tried the convenient OCR feature in JAWS? It's not great, but can
>be helpful sometimes, even with documents that have been scanned as
>pictures. For pdf docs, it helps to zoom to 100% or more before trying
>the OCR. Like I said, it doesn't work great, but can be helpful for a
>quick read-through of the document to help you see if you want to go
>to the trouble of having more extensive OCR work done by Kurzweil,
>etc. I am not sure of the key command in JAWS 14, but in JAWS 13, you
>press insert plus the space bar, then o, then w, and wait for JAWS to
>say "OCR finished".
>
>HTH,
>
>Shickeytha
>
>On 11/4/13, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Don't forget that if you use Gmail, you can save the PDF to your
> > computer, email it to yourself as an attachment and then open the
> > attached file in HTML. It will make navigation much easier though
> > won't fix all the column formatting problems. And this only works for
> > PDF's that haven't been scanned. If it's been scanned, then you'll
> > need to use OCR of some sort to convert it. RoboBraille does a pretty
> > good job of preserving formatting.
> >
> > Best,
> > Arielle
> >
> > On 11/4/13, minh ha <minh.ha927 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> What do you mean adobi doesn't read the file? Does jaws say "alert,
> >> document is empty" or something along those lines? If it does, the
> >> document has been scanned in as a picture and there's really no way fo
> >> ryou to read it except use Kurzweil or robobraille to convert them.
> >>
> >> On 11/4/13, Hannah Chadwick <sparklylicious at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Cindy,
> >>> I've tried adobe. However, when I open the file, Jaws won't read it. is
> >>> there something I can purchase to make it more accessible?
> >>> Thank you, Hannah
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: nabs-l [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Cindy
> >>> Bennett
> >>> Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 10:54 PM
> >>> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> >>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] PDF Files
> >>>
> >>> 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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> >>>> m
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Cindy Bennett
> >>> Secretary: National Association of Blind Students
> >>>
> >>> B.A. Psychology, UNC Wilmington
> >>> clb5590 at gmail.com
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>> om
> >>>
> >>>
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> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty
> >> recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
> >> but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on
> >> their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." T. E. Lawrence