[nfbcs] PDF with words run together

[Peter Donahue]

Hello Denice and everyone,

	Mary and I have noticed this phenomenon as well. When we attempt to read certain PDF documents the words appear to be run together. It's hard to know if this is a flub of the document's creator or if the trouble lies with our screen readers. This is something the screen reader developers should look at to resolve this issue if it's due to screen reader bugs.

Peter Donahue


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Dr. Denise M Robinson via nfbcs
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 9:16 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Dr. Denise M Robinson; Tracy Carcione
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] PDF with words run together

Tracy, attach it and lets us take a look to see if we can get something
better

* Dr Denise M Robinson*

*Denise M Robinson, TVI, PhD*

Specialist-Technology/Blind Skills | Teacher of the Blind and Visually
Impaired
425-220-6935 | www.yourtechvision.com

[image: TechVision Logo]
“Helping the visually impaired see their world changed through technology”





On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 9:27 AM Tracy Carcione via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Thanks Doug.  The option Left-to-right, top-to-bottom worked better.
> There are still some words run together, but a lot less.
> I also tried Nancy's idea of opening it with Word, but there must be a lot
> of images or something--Word wouldn't read much.
> Thanks to both of you.  NFBCS comes through again!
> Tracy
>
> > I would call the following answer something between an explanation and an
> > educated guess.
> >
> > I believe that when a PDF document is not "tagged," which means marked up
> > for assistive technology, it is difficult for programs to figure out
> > things like where a word starts and ends, what is a heading versus a
> > paragraph
> > versus a table, etc. Sometimes, the guesswork programs use in such a case
> > can be wrong. In print nowadays, the size of a character, and even the
> > width of a space between words, can vary.
> >
> > You might try changing the reading order, which should be an option you
> > see when Acrobat launches. "Infer reading order from document" is usually
> > the default, but there are two alternatives.
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 08:24:52AM -0500, NFBCS mailing list wrote:
> > Why do many PDF docs run words together, and is there anything I can do
> > about it once I've received such a document?
> > Here is an example from the doc I got for an upcoming class:
> > Stepinto theworldofanalyticswitha thoroughintroductionto ...
> >
> > It's comprehensible, especially with the help of a braille display, but
> it
> > takes some effort.
> > Tracy
> >
> >
> >
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> > Level Access             doug.lee at LevelAccess.com
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