[blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF formatand JAWS

Wed Jan 21 14:13:21 UTC 2015

Which pretty much describes most of the equipment in a public defense office, lol!  Thanks for the suggestions - we are trying everything we can.

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Rod Alcidonis, Esquire via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 3:58 PM
To: Aaron Cannon; Blind Law Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF formatand JAWS

I agree.

Printing and scanning is old school.

Rod Alcidonis

-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Cannon via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 5:55 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF formatand JAWS

With a modern OCR application such as Abbyy Finereader, printing and rescanning a PDF is almost never necessary.  Any modern OCR package that's worth anything should offer a means to import PDF files directly.

Aaron

On 1/20/15, Russell J. Thomas via blindlaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> This may not be a solution for you, but could you have these 
> transcripts printed out and then scanned?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Susan 
> Kelly via blindlaw
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 12:36 PM
> To: 'Robert Jaquiss'; 'Blind Law Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF 
> format and JAWS
>
> The court website is technically covered by ADA, but getting 
> compliance has met with puzzled reactions, at least in our county - 
> huge numbers of so-called "professionals" seem to assume that if it is 
> on the web, it is automatically accessible.  (Believe me, I have 
> trouble biting back the sarcastic responses when I am told this.)
>
> I do not know what program the court reporters use to prepare their 
> transcripts...I can say that the transcripts that are prepared from 
> audio recording machines are fairly useable, aside from the frequent 
> notations of "unintelligible" for words that could not be determined 
> based on lack of volume or poor pronunciation, so I assume that those 
> are prepared in Word or Word Perfect.  The problems seem to arise most 
> often with transcripts prepared from the traditional stenograph 
> machine used by human reporters.
> From my experience when I could still read things visually, these are 
> much more accurate in terms of contents, but not at all amenable to 
> use with assistive technology when disclosed digitally.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Jaquiss [mailto:rjaquiss at earthlink.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 12:17 PM
> To: Susan Kelly; 'Blind Law Mailing List'
> Subject: RE: [blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF 
> format and JAWS
>
> Hello:
>
>      An essential thing to know about PDF files is that they can be 
> created in a variety of ways. MS Word can create a PDF file from a 
> Word file and these should be quite readable. It is also possible to 
> create PDF files by scanning printed documents and creating PDF files 
> from the resulting images.
> This later type will not be as accessible and will have to be 
> processed with an OCR package. I would suggest trying to make 
> arrangements to have the original word processor file emailed to you. 
> I would think that a court's website would be covered by the ADA.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Susan 
> Kelly via blindlaw
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 9:03 AM
> To: 'blindlaw at nfbnet.org'
> Cc: (gui-talk at nfbnet.org)
> Subject: [blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF format 
> and JAWS
>
> Our court of appeals loads the transcripts for cases to its website, 
> which is becoming increasingly inaccessible, thanks to the use of 
> semi-described images on at least half of its links instead of 
> properly labeled link-boxes.
> I can navigate around that, albeit slowly, by continuing to click 
> through each link (they don't list well) until I hear what seems to be 
> the proper link for whatever it is I need to do.  The real problem 
> comes in once I have accessed my case file and try to listen to the 
> transcripts themselves.
> Some
> are PDF, while others are simply .tif or .jpg scans.  On top of that, 
> even the PDF files have not been properly OCRd, or so it seems, as 
> they will not read through continuously despite my settings in Adobe 
> and JAWS.
>
> My assistant has tried to circumvent this issue by downloading the 
> file to our office network.  The problem persists, though, with the 
> narration stopping at then of each page; using a "page down" or "ctrl page down"
> command is ineffective, as reading starts back up mid-page; I thus 
> have to advance it one line forward (which does not read) and then 
> back up one and start the "read all" command again to read each page.  
> This is very time-consuming and annoying, and I have to assume that it 
> is, at least in part, the result of the manner in which the court 
> reporter has transcribed the documents.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions how to tackle this problem?  Also, 
> does anyone know how I would word a polite letter to the reporters / 
> courts to suggest that these documents be better prepared?  Because I 
> work in the juvenile court, our time limits are extremely short and 
> this is a time waste that I really would like to avoid.
>
> Thanks!
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