[NFBCS] PDF accessibility is crazy

Mon Jul 12 20:48:39 UTC 2021

Dear Tracy, 

I hope you are doing well. Not sure if others have suggested this strategy or not, certainly I'd like to chime in here. 

The way I have been dealing with PDFS lately is with JAWS built-in OCR functionalities. No they are not 100% perfectly perfect, but it works, at least for my reading and information gather needs, should I need to act upon it. JAWS 2021 gives me the ability to directly extract the text of a PDF file via OCR, and paste that resulting fully accessible and navigable text right into a word document which will be neatly opened up right in front to me to read. Or I can just put the text (OCR) into the JAWS Results Viewer without generating a word document and read that way, although in my opinion / experience, Word documents are easier. I wouldn't recommend doing this with a complex math / chemistry or music worksheet, but for the most part it really works. 

I don't know what JAWS version you have although I would think it could make a difference, certainly.  JAWS 18 and later gives one the ability to:
1. In windows explorer, scroll to a given PDF
2. Insert+Space to hear the keystroke layer sequence sound, then O for OCR, and then F to scan that file. 

Or one may have said PDF file open in Adobe Reader, execute the above steps, but instead of F it would be D for document, and all will be golden. 

Hope this isn't a lot of info. Just sharing what works for me and something you can try. 

Take care and have an awesome day. 

Humberto 

> On Jul 12, 2021, at 9:04 AM, Greg Kearney via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> This problem dates back to trying to take a format which was designed to preserve the visual printed page and making that format accessible The better solution would be to use formats which are accessible from the start such as ePub or HTML. PDF by it;s very nature will never be as accessible and will always be hard to get it to be so.
> 
> Greg
> 
>> On Jul 12, 2021, at 10:55 AM, Steve Jacobson via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Greg,
>> 
>> Although I don't disagree with what you said at all, I agree with Tracy that the results we get for the same document can vary seemingly with the phase of the moon.  I can open a document with adobe and it seems to get stuck. I can close Adobe and open it again, and the document reads perfectly.  Sometimes Microsoft Edge seems to handle a document fine but Adobe doesn't.  Getting Adobe Acrobat to read directly from an internet link seems very inconsistent regardless of what I do with settings.  Even if some of the issue is accessibility, I think there should be more consistency even if the results are not 100% accessible. Often, I can deal with a PDF document that may not be completely accessible if I can get a good rendering of the document.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Steve Jacobson
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Greg Kearney via NFBCS
>> Sent: Monday, July 12, 2021 10:20 AM
>> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> Cc: Greg Kearney <gkearney at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [NFBCS] PDF accessibility is crazy
>> 
>> The real problem here is that making properly accessible PDF files is very dificult and few know how it is done.
>> 
>> Greg
>> 
>>>> On Jul 12, 2021, at 9:43 AM, Tracy Carcione via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'm taking a series of workshops this week, and all the access links are in
>>> a PDF.  I opened the document on 3 different machines in 4 different ways,
>>> but it only really worked on one.  
>>> 
>>> On my laptop, I tried opening it with Firefox andChrome, and neither worked
>>> well enough to use.
>>> 
>>> In Adobe BC, I tried opening it on my old Windows 7 PC, and that sort of
>>> worked, but not great. But it does work OK on my Windows10 laptop with Adobe
>>> BC, thank Goodness.
>>> 
>>> Why does accessibility have to be so complicated!
>>> 
>>> I tried to figure out if my 2 machines are running different versions of
>>> Adobe BC, but can't find where it keeps the version#.
>>> 
>>> If I download whatever Adobe I find onto my other laptop, is it likely to
>>> work, or is it only certain versions that work well?  The version that works
>>> is on my work laptop, so may be a pro version.
>>> 
>>> Really, it's insane to have to try so many things to find the one that is
>>> accessible.
>>> 
>>> Tracy
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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