[nabs-l] Reading PDF documents with jaws

Mon Oct 21 17:45:36 UTC 2013

Ariel's strategy is an excellent one. Gmail's html versions of PDFs are very usable.

The problem with split words is I think a matter of columns, especially.

One ther strategy is to save the PDF as plain text. You lose page info, headings, etc, but you get the text in a cleaner form.

Another strategy is to buy Adobe Acrobat at the student rate, about disblegj.  I don't know how accessible it is, but it can take the PDF and convert it with the original text to something else, such as Word or Rich text or html or even epub.  
Dan

Dan Burke - Sent from iPhone

> On Oct 20, 2013, at 9:58 PM, "Arielle Silverman" <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Amanda and all,
> I know exactly what you are talking about, and hate PDF's in Adobe
> Reader not only for that reason, but also because it's harder to
> search for specific words or navigate quickly through the document.
> I use Gmail, so whenever I have a PDF I email it to myself as an
> attachment. Then I open up the email I sent myself and just below the
> attachment name, click the "view as HTML" link. You will see the text
> of your PDF document in what looks like a webpage but with no links on
> it. Since it's in HTML, JAWS treats it like a web page and many JAWS
> shortcuts such as searching with Control-F work quite well.
> For almost all PDF's I've tried that are not scanned documents, I find
> the HTML view is very easy to navigate and search through, and most of
> the problems with words running together or one word per line are
> instantly fixed. I use the "view as HTML" to read almost all research
> articles, including ones I originally get as Word docs, because it is
> so easy to use the JAWS find command (control-F) to find specific
> words etc.
> If you use Gmail I would highly recommend that solution. If the PDF is
> scanned, though, HTML view won't work. You'll need to send it to
> convert at robobraille.org
> with the word "doc" (without the quotes) in the subject and then view
> the word doc you get back in HTML.
> If you don't use Gmail, you could also just copy and paste the text
> from the PDF into a word doc or the body of an email message you send
> yourself, and sometimes that fixes the reading problems. Again, this
> won't work for scanned PDF's.
> 
> Best,
> Arielle
> 
>> On 10/19/13, christopher nusbaum <dotkid.nusbaum at gmail.com> wrote:
>> RoboBraille.org.
>> 
>> Chris Nusbaum
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Oct 19, 2013, at 12:05 PM, justin williams <justin.williams2 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> What is that robo braille internet address?
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: nabs-l [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Dan Burke
>>> Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2013 11:49 AM
>>> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Reading PDF documents with jaws
>>> 
>>> 1. checking accessibility settings is important, as described previously.
>>> 
>>> 2. when that doesn't fix it, you can try going to the instructor for the
>>> source document, which hopefully is something like MS word, or 3.  Try
>>> open
>>> book, kurzweil or robo-Braille. Remember that these options involve OCR
>>> of
>>> the document, so it may solve the reading issue, but it is not reading
>>> the
>>> PDF text as you did in adobe.  It is doing OCR and producing  a new doc
>>> which may have some OCR errors.
>>> 
>>> Dan
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Dan Burke - Sent from iPhone
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 19, 2013, at 7:02 AM, "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Part of what you say is true -- the steps you give should be taken to
>>> optomize the way that JAWS and Acrobat Reader work together.  However,
>>> there
>>> can be problems in the way in which a PDF was created, that your steps
>>> won't, and can't fix, the previously mentioned short lines, run together
>>> words etc.  They are caused by the program that actually created the PDF.
>>>> 
>>>> Dave
>>>> 
>>>> At 02:32 AM 10/19/2013, you wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>> The problems between Jaws and .pdf-s are solvable. Acrobat reader has
>>> special settings for accessibility that seems hasn't been made when the
>>> program has been installed.
>>>>> How to solve that?
>>>>> 1. Open any .pdf document
>>>>> 2. Open the menus and press right arrow to reach the edit menu.
>>>>> 3. Press twice the up arrow to reach Accessibility subMenu.
>>>>> 4. Press down arrow to hear "Set up assistant".
>>>>> 5. Press enter and go through the screens and set up your preferred
>>> settings.
>>>>> Note: If you set the program to read the entire document, have in mind
>>> that the large documents will made you wait, showing the message "Alert:
>>> document being processed".
>>>>> 
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> Dzhovani
>>>> 
>>>> 
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