[Trainer-Talk] Tricky PDF and JAWS issue

[Jim Portillo]

Greetings,

 

I'll attempt to explain my issue.

I signed up to take a class, and the instructor is suggesting we have a
specific book and workbook.  I contacted the publisher, and he said that
although he didn't make the book available to people electronically, he
would make it available to me provided I agree to some pretty sensible
logistics.  He has the original files used to print the books, and they are
PDFs.

These files are password protected, so I can view the files but not edit or
change them.  I guess there is another password, if I need it, for copying
or printing.

I tried reading the file with Adobe Acrobat Reader, but at first, I must not
have had some screen reader settings turned on.  I went ahead and set them
up and tried rereading the book.  Once it was done processing and I tried
reading it, I just kept hearing "blank" whenever I scrolled down.  I had an
AIRA agent look at my screen, and he said there were definitely pages of
text on my screen, but I guess JAWS wasn't reading them.

I tried doing a JAWS convenient OCR command, but when I tried putting in the
password, it didn't like it.

I already paid for these files, so I can't very well return or ask for my
money back.  I'm just wondering if I'm doing something wrong or if there's
something else I can try to get these two books to read.

I was also going to try copying and pasting some of the material into a Word
file, but I guess I'll need the second password for that.  I didn't think I
would.

Is there perhaps some other setting in Adobe?  I remember having a similar
problem in the past, but that particular PDF wasn't locked.  I still
couldn't get it to read; although, I was able to get JAWS OCR to read most
of it.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate them.

Thanks much.

Jim