On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 10:59 am, Gudrun Brunot wrote:
The PDF Exchange viewer is for opening a scanned image-based pdf file, performing OCR of same file, saving it with resulting text layers, but you then close the Exchange Viewer and call up the saved file in Adobe DC to read it or fill it out, am I correct? Yes, I, too, have followed the download links for W9 forms that people have sent, and, in Adobe DC, I can fill that out. For a situation when you can use a generic W9 form, one should simply download the one that's accessible already. As I mentioned in another message, some translation agencies want me to use a form that they provide, and there, I'd have to OCR it with Exchange Viewer. I get so many prospective job offers involving PDF files from translation agencies that I will certainly make use of this program. Maybe I'll even be able to accept a few of them rather than spending all my time writing polite and professional-sounding refusal letters due to lack of accessibility. Gudrun, Yes, you have now grasped what I had hoped I was explaining clearly. While PDF Exchange Viewer will "play well" to a limited extent with JAWS it, like so many other programs, encounters issues either because it is not coded for accessibility or because JAWS hasn't been coded to work with it (and it's clear to me that there is a LOT of stuff in JAWS that is very one-purpose and one-program customization) or both. When my clients get a PDF document that they know, based on the source, which is usually their online course management systems, has to actually be text but that was originally scanned as an image PDF I wanted them to be able to independently do the conversion in a timely manner. I have encouraged them, when this is necessary, to donate the resulting file back to the source so that it could be used in the future. I can't really even blame the people putting up the image files because some of these are ancient and most folks have no idea that there exists a difference between an image PDF and an accessible PDF with a text layer because, wait for it, they literally don't see it and because they can see they don't have reason to encounter a barrier. They just pass along what they have. I'm trying to make the people I tutor become effective advocates for accessibility not just for themselves but for those who are sure to follow later. Just so you know, PDF Exchange Viewer's OCR capabilities extend beyond English if that's something you can take advantage of. I want to say that Spanish, German, and French are included with the downloaded version, but I can't be certain of that list. My experience with the OCR function on its default settings has been that it is very impressive. I have used it on documents that are well over 100 pages long and where some of the scans, while not so horrible as to be unreadable to the sighted, are not particularly good, either. If the image PDFs are from very good to excellent initial documents or scans the recognition is very close to 100%. You could probably get away with using that function with only very occasional assistance from a sighted helper for something PDF Exchange Viewer's OCR engine simply could not recognize for some reason. Oh, as an aside, I think all IRS forms and instructions are and have been accessible using JAWS and Adobe Reader for some time now. If issues still exist with the fillable forms I'd like to hear what people are encountering (and you might want to report it to Freedom Scientific Technical Support, too). Brian
