[Athen] Question regarding "Abby" training

[Leyna Bencomo]

Wink,

If you are up for creating those videos, I would find them immensely helpful.  I think it would be great to have something to use to teach student workers.    Personally, I am taking on the Alt Media Production process at my new job and, having no predecessor here, I will be teaching myself to become an expert with the generous advice of some of my local counterparts at other schools.


Leyna Bencomo
Assistive Technology Specialist
Information Technology
University of Colorado Colorado Springs
lbencomo at uccs.edu<mailto:lbencomo at uccs.edu>
719-255-4202




From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Wink Harner
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 4:45 PM
To: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network'
Subject: Re: [Athen] Question regarding "Abby" training

Hi Marcie & ATHENites-

We have both ABBYY Fine Reader (12.0) & OmniPage (18) at Southern Oregon Univ. They both do OCR and save in a variety of formats, and are good at different things.

For complex graphics/or graphics heavy complicated texts such as Anatomy & Physiology, or Art History, as a couple of examples, I use OmniPage because it is easier to process the odd-shaped graphics/photo boxes and re-order text recognition boxes. For books that are text-heavy and photo or graphics-light, or for texts that include multiple languages, ABBYY FineReader does a better job processing and recognizing the text (OCR) accurately. I do not do ANY editing in either of these as MSW is a much better, faster, more accurate way of global replacement, font substitution, style menu consistency & it has spell-check. That said, I have scanned directly from our Canon 9080C high-speed duplex scanner into ABBYY FR, saved as PDF. I can then run OCR in either OmniPage or AFR depending on the content. One thing I like a lot about the newest version (I have 12.0) of AFR is the ease in which files can be simultaneously saved in two different formats (for example, a docx and PDF). Disadvantage is that AFR saves both of these formats in the same folder rather than separate ones, so it takes a little bit of organization once you're done to move all the DOCX files into their own separate folder. Big advantage is that ALL the files can keep the same name (i.e., I can name the first PDF file 00_FM_NAMEOFTHEBOOK and AFR will save the PDF file with that name, the DOCX file with that name, and the AFR file with that name -no need to retype!).

For fairly straightforward text textbooks, I use automatic recognition and AFR automatically selects text & picture boxes throughout the document and runs an automatic "READ" (OCR) on this. I always go back to the beginning of each chapter and check each page to make sure the boxes are in the correct read order. OmniPage automatic recognition does not do as well at this, so when using OP, I draw & number the text/graphics/table boxes manually instead. It is easy enough to re-number the read order of the text/graphics boxes in AFR. I then run "READ" again. If there are lots of unusual terms or names, foreign words I'll make sure it's spelled correctly then click 'add to dictionary' so AFR will skip it the next time it runs across that word. If the student needs TTS and doesn't need photos, graphs, illustrations etc. excerpted and placed in a separate file, the PDF is saved as "exact copy" so it looks like the scanned pages, and the DOCX file is opened for editing. We run spell check, make sure style menus are used for chapter headings etc., that fonts match, that hanging hyphens are removed with CTRL H search & replace, and goofy errata are taken out or corrected. Hard to do this in either AFR or OP!

I have not yet used the AFR to e-Pub or Kindle conversion yet, but it looks easy enough. If the TOC is composed correctly (using Style menu in MSW for Header, sub-head 1, 2, 3 etc.) and the page numbers are correct, AFR allows for the collection of the same meta-data that Calibre does for imbedding title, author, edition, ISBN & cover information into the book).

I am unaware of any useful videos other than the set Sean offered. It probably would be useful for a lot of people if there were a step-by-step screen cast available. Perhaps I can offer to tackle this for the greater good in the near future. Would that be helpful?

Hope this is somewhat helpful information to you and others.

Blessings to all for a lovely CHRISTMAS/HANUKAH/KWANZA/HOLIDAY season! Safe travels all around.

Wink


Wink Harner
winkharner1113 at gmail.com<mailto:winkharner1113 at gmail.com>
foreigntype at gmail.com<mailto:foreigntype at gmail.com>

(Disclaimer: this email was dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Please forgive any quirks, mis-recognitions, or omissions.)


Wink Harner
Assistive Technology Specialist
Southern Oregon University
541-552-8442

harnerw at sou.edu<mailto:harnerw at sou.edu>





From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Dimac, Marcie
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 12:01 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network; athen-list; athen-list-request at mailman13.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-request at mailman13.u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Question regarding "Abby" training

Afternoon all!

I have been in my position for about six months now, and have begun to supervise the person who is in charge of e-text.  I recently realized that while we have Abby (v. 9), we are only using it to scan in books that we have spliced into Word documents and editing within Word.

I would like to work with her on using all of the robust features in Abby to render a document accessible (rather than putting the text in Word) and was wondering if anyone knows of any good (and potentially free) online training resources/websites/videos for "how to use" Abby to render docs accessible.

I attended the two-day training while in CO for the conference and it was EXCELLENT, but, I would like to have a resource (preferably some vids)  that my e-text coordinator could refer to often when using the program as a resource to refresh her memory on how to use the program.

Any insight is welcomed!!

Happy holidays!

Marcie Dimač, M.A. Ed.

Coordinator, Assistive Technology
Student Accessibility Services
Kent State University
Ground Floor, Rm. 23
DeWeese Center
P.O. Box 5190
Kent, Ohio 44242

Phone: 330-672-3391
Fax: 330-672-3763
Email: mdimac at kent.edu<mailto:mdimac at kent.edu>

www.kent.edu/sas<http://www.kent.edu/sas>

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