[Athen] Question regarding "Abby" training

foreigntype foreigntype at gmail.com
Tue Dec 23 11:44:41 PST 2014


Leyna,



I'll put this on my New Year's project list. Am on the AHEAD technology
standing committee and we have a conference call coming up the first week of
January. I'll bring up the global question for the group to see if "how to"
screen casts for a variety of technology/software would be something the
committee would also like to offer as part of the AHEAD branch of our alt
tech network.



In any case, I'll work on the one for ABBYY FR. Will keep you posted.



Hope you have a great holiday.



Blessings from the wet northwest.



Wink





Wink Harner

<mailto:foreigntype at gmail.com> foreigntype at gmail.com



This email was dictated with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Please forgive any
omissions, errata or anomalies.



From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On
Behalf Of Leyna Bencomo
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 10:00 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Question regarding "Abby" training



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

<mailto:lbencomo at uccs.edu> 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

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











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
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



www.kent.edu/sas



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