[Athen] Accessible OCR for Mac

[Karlen Communications]

Yes, thanks!

 

Cheers, Karen

 

From: athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Sean
Keegan
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:37 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible OCR for Mac

 


> I have a client who needs an accessible OCR tool for the mac OS that is

usable with VoiceOver. Any suggestions?

 

For production purposes, I would use Abbyy Finereader for Mac
(http://finereader.abbyy.com/finereader_for_mac/), but I do not believe it
will be accessible with VoiceOver. Some of the basic menu features could be
navigated, but when you are dealing with the zoning tools and functions,
then those components will not be accessible.

 

Another option to consider (although I cannot comment on its accuracy) is
OCR Kit on the App Store (http://ocrkit.com/index.html). While the demo
videos show dragging a file onto the OCR Kit icon, you can also navigate to
the image file with the keyboard and choose "Open With > OCR Kit" from the
right-click menu. This will allow the OCR to recognize the document and open
the file in your preferred application. It does not have the features of
Abbyy, but may be an option.

 

I have used ReadIris previously
(http://www.irislink.com/c2-2115-189/Readiris-14--OCR-Software--Scan--Conver
t---Manage-your-Documents-.aspx), but this was not that accessible of an
interface and suffered from similar issues as Abbyy Finereader in terms of
zoning tools, etc.

 

Lastly, there are also web-based tools to consider, but these are automated
and you generally don't have fine control over the scanning, etc. I know the
Robobraille and Sensus sites (Robobraille: http://robobraille.org/frontpage
, Sensus: http://sensusaccess.com/) both use Abbyy Recognition Server and
give you choices for the output option, so it really depends on how good the
scan is for the input.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Take care,

Sean

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