[nfbcs] [Blindtlk] question on navigating electronic docs

Sat Jan 20 19:44:13 UTC 2018

I've had reasonable success with PDF documents that are just an image scan,
opening them in Kurzweil 1000.  K1000 treats them as an image, and reads
them as if they were from a book.
Because I have K1000, I haven't tried Jaws OCR on them, but it might work.
Tracy

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jude DaShiell via
nfbcs
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2018 12:03 AM
To: Steve Jacobson; Blind Talk Mailing List; nfbcs at nfbnet.org
Cc: Jude DaShiell
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] [Blindtlk] question on navigating electronic docs

Also, the pdf document has to have been created or repaired by someone with
both an extensive knowledge of pdf accessibility and commitment to pdf
accessibility.  If what's inside that pdf is just a scanned image, without
even the language being enabled it's inaccessible.  If one can get beyond
the security protections adobe put on those documents by default with latest
versions of its software, best bet is to do a thorough accessibility check
on each document and fix what's possible to fix before even attempting to
read any of them.  Most documents produced by the Federal Government have
Section 508 accessibility requirements whether honored or not.  Working
papers do not have Section 508 accessibility requirements.  Put this in the
context of adobe not having a single setting in its software which enables
all accessibility automatically unless specifically overridden by its
Federal customer, or for that matter any other of its customers and you can
understand how and why the state of most adobe documents is where it is at
these days. 
If Wordperfect by default enables a language attribute on documents it
produces which are then imported into adobe you have a chance at
accessibility but only a chance since the remainder of the accessibility
editing or repair may not have been done beyond the language for the adobe
files.  This is something I had to deal with before retiring from Federal
service a few years ago so I have one or two insights on the matter.

On Fri, 19 Jan 2018, Steve Jacobson via blindtlk wrote:

> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2018 23:29:19
> From: Steve Jacobson via blindtlk <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
> Reply-To: steve.jacobson at visi.com,
>     Blind Talk Mailing List <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
> To: 'Blind Talk Mailing List' <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>, nfbcs at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Steve Jacobson <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
> Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] question on navigating electronic docs
> 
> Anne,
>
> I saw your note on both lists but did not respond assuming somebody 
> with more specific experience would answer.  However, I'm sending this 
> reply to both lists to help avoid duplicate answers.
>
> Unfortunately, the answers are not simple.  I do not know much about 
> WordPerfect documents, but I believe you can open them in Microsoft Word.
> There is a mode in Microsoft Word and JAWS that gives you some ability 
> to navigate in a manner that is similar to the web.  If you are only 
> having to read WordPerfect documents, this might be an alternative.  
> It is more questionable whether editing such a document and converting 
> it back to WordPerfect is a good idea.  There is also a "simple" or 
> "complex" document setting in the verbosity menu of JAWS that might 
> help for navigating within Word.
>
> In general, the same navigation keys that are available on the web are 
> also available when reading a PDF document.  I am almost certain that 
> you already know that, though, so perhaps I am not understandint your 
> question.  To have the best chance of taking advantage of that 
> navigation, use the "infer reading order from document" as the reading
order in the reading dialog.
> Sometimes reading "Left to Right, top to bottom" gives better results, 
> but often it does not preserve as much of the structure.
>
> However, hear is the downside.  None of the above will help unless the 
> structure exists in the documents you are reading.  You can't skip to 
> headings if there are no headings.  You cant use table navigation keys 
> if the data were not formatted as a table.  Particularly PDF documents 
> are very unpredictable as to the amount of document structure that has 
> been included in the document.
>
> Anne, if I've missed what you were really asking, let me know.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Jacobson
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Anne 
> Naber via blindtlk
> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2018 2:51 PM
> To: blindtlk <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Anne Naber <amnaber92 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Blindtlk] question on navigating electronic docs
>
> Hi,
> I sent this out to the computer science group as well, but haven't 
> received any responses.
> I'm wondering if there is a way to navigate through pdfs an word 
> perfect docs similar to how you would navigate the web?  Can you 
> divide the doc into headings, links etc?  If so, can you then locate 
> and jump around?  Is there a controlled way to skip over large blocks 
> of text?
> Thanks,
> Anne
>
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