[Athen] Scan to Readable PDF Question

[Sean J Keegan]

 > He has asked me about scanners that scan text directly into
 > readable PDFs. Does anybody know if this exists? Does Zoom
 > Text have OCR built into its code?

Have you looked at any of the Canon Canoscan LiDE scanners? Based on the 
documentation, I believe you can "scan to PDF" which will do some OCR 
during the processing (the OCR happens on the user's computer).  See:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CanoScan-LiDE210-Scanner-4508B002/dp/B003VQR1TS

Brother also makes a desktop model that offers OCR functionality:
http://www.brother-usa.com/Scanners/ModelDetail.aspx?ProductID=ADS2000#.UFzfdxiz7x4

That being said, most people I encounter prefer to purchase a scanner 
and then purchase a separate OCR program to support the conversion 
process.  In part, the OCR application that comes bundled with scanners 
is a bit limited and may not offer the best recognition capabilities.

Adobe Acrobat Professional does have some OCR functionality built into 
the application.  That may be an option as well, although I have 
sometimes had issues with the recognition accuracy depending on the PDF.

Does your friend have access to the Internet?  If so, one option may be 
to obtain a scanner and then submit documents to an online OCR system to 
obtain a text-based PDF.  One service is called Sensus Access 
(http://sensusaccess.com) and the results are returned to your e-mail 
inbox (I know the OCR engine is the Abbyy Recognition Server - very high 
quality).

At this time, the desktop ZoomText application does not have a built in 
OCR engine for PDF documents.

Take care,
Sean

-- 
Sean Keegan
Associate Director, Assistive Technology
Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University
http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae