[Athen] Editing PDFs with a Screen Reader

Robert Spangler rspangler1 at udayton.edu
Tue Sep 4 07:53:57 PDT 2018


Thanks so much for this detailed explanation. I have HTML experience, so
this makes a lot of sense. Often times I do not have a student worker
available to help me (summer breaks and such) so I have to break books into
chapters upon receipt from the publisher. I find it very useful if there
are bookmarks, because I can extract those by going to this treeview in
Adobe, invoking the context menu on each one and choosing print section. I
then print it to the Microsoft Print to PDF.

Many books do not offer this luxury, however, and it's much harder to find
the page numbers to know what ranges to extract for each chapter. Is this
another task that is simply going to be tougher for those of us who use
screen readers? The way Adobe lags with screen readers, jumps around at
times in the buffer, just makes me want to bang my head against the wall
every time I have to deal with it. I use a program called QRead for
reading PDFs which simplifies the experience by presenting the document
like a text file.

Robert


On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 10:34 AM Karlen Communications <
info at karlencommunications.com> wrote:


> No, Bookmarks are typically a list of the Headings in a document. If you

> are using Word, you can turn on the Navigation Pane (Alt + W, K in Word

> 2013/2016) and get a list of Headings in the document. This is similar to

> what you get when you convert a Word document or other formats to tagged

> PDF and have the “create Bookmarks from Headings” setting turned on. It is

> also similar to getting a list of Headings with your adaptive technology.

>

>

>

> Apologies, I forget the keyboard command in versions of Word prior to

> 2013. Then it was under View, Document Map.

>

>

>

> Tags are similar to the HTML Tags where every paragraph has a <P> Tag, a

> Heading 1 has an <H1> Tag with other Headings having corresponding numbers.

> Lists have a parent <L> Tag with an <Lbl> Tag for a bullet or number and an

> <LBody> Tag for the content of the bullet or number. Tables have a parent

> <Table> Tag and every row has a <TR> Tag with the cells having either <TH>

> Tags for table Header cells or <TD> Tags for table Data cells.

>

>

>

> When adaptive technology gets a list of Headings, it should be drawing on

> the information in the Tags to get that list. The Bookmarks are another way

> to navigate the content if the document doesn’t have a Table of Contents or

> if you don’t want to return to a Table of Contents to move to another

> topic…you can open the Bookmarks Panel in the Adobe Reader or Acrobat

> Navigation Pane and see the “list of Headings.” Of course you can make

> anything a Bookmark in a PDF document, but generally we use Headings to

> provide consistent navigational tools.

>

>

>

> Cheers, Karen

>

>

>

> *From:* athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> *On

> Behalf Of *Robert Spangler

> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 4, 2018 10:10 AM

> *To:* Access Technology Higher Education Network <

> athen-list at u.washington.edu>

> *Subject:* Re: [Athen] Editing PDFs with a Screen Reader

>

>

>

> Yeah, that stinks. Are the tags in the PDF the same thing is what Adobe

> calls Bookmarks?

>

>

>

>

>

> On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 9:46 AM Karlen Communications <

> info at karlencommunications.com> wrote:

>

> Screen readers and Text-to-Speech tools are always in ”virtual view” of

> HTML and PDF documents. This means that the adaptive technology is reading

> from the buffer not the text layer of the document, In PDF, this is the

> Tags Tree. It is the reason we can’t add notes or other comments to PDF

> documents – where we think we are in the document is not where we are, it

> is where we are in the buffer. It is also why we can’t follow notes or

> comments in PDF documents. For us, there is no connection between the note

> or comment and the “text on the page.”

>

>

>

> While we can go down the Tags Tree, open the tags and review some of the

> content/that is showing, we can’t tell if content has been missed or tagged

> correctly based on what is on the visual representation of the page we are

> working from.

>

>

>

> You do need eyesight to fully remediate PDF documents.

>

>

>

> Cheers, Karen

>

>

>

> *From:* athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> *On

> Behalf Of *Robert Spangler

> *Sent:* Friday, August 31, 2018 9:05 AM

> *To:* Access Technology Higher Education Network <

> athen-list at u.washington.edu>

> *Subject:* [Athen] Editing PDFs with a Screen Reader

>

>

>

> Hello:

>

>

>

> I am in charge of our alternative formats program. As a screen reader

> user, I do not find Adobe Acrobat Pro or Abbyy Finereader to be the most

> accessible. I find them laggy, they sometimes freeze and I have not found

> a way to edit PDFs directly.

>

>

>

> Is this possible for blind folks to do with a screen reader? Ultimately,

> I need to be able to remediate PDFs. I would like to do tagging, edit the

> text, do chapter breaks, etc. I know I can do chapter breaks especially if

> there are bookmarks in the PDF, but I find this difficult to do, to

> determine the page numbers easily, if there are not bookmarks.

>

>

>

> Normally, we have student workers who handle the editing and I just do the

> administrative stuff, such as sending out the texts. We have summer

> classes, though, when the student workers are not here, so this task

> ultimately falls to me!

>

>

>

> I would love to hear from people, especially blind people, who are working

> with remediating PDFs. Is this possible? Are there accessibility problems

> with these programs? Admittedly, I've just accepted that most PDFs are not

> always edited adequately and I deal with it, but I don't want to tell my

> students this. Haha. I usually run it through OCR and that's sufficient

> for me except for when the order of the reading is incorrect.

>

>

>

> Looking forward to responses.

>

>

>

> Robert

>

>

>

>

> --

>

> Robert Spangler

> Disability Services Technical Support Specialist

> rspangler1 at udayton.edu

> Office of Learning Resources (OLR) - RL 023

> Ryan C. Harris Learning & Teaching Center (LTC)

> University of Dayton | 300 College Park | Dayton, Ohio 45469-1302

> Phone: 937-229-2066

>

> Fax: 937-229-3270

>

> Ohio Relay: 711 (available for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing)

>

> Web Site: http://go.udayton.edu/learning

>

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman12.u.washington.edu

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>

>

>

>

> --

>

> Robert Spangler

> Disability Services Technical Support Specialist

> rspangler1 at udayton.edu

> Office of Learning Resources (OLR) - RL 023

> Ryan C. Harris Learning & Teaching Center (LTC)

> University of Dayton | 300 College Park | Dayton, Ohio 45469-1302

> Phone: 937-229-2066

>

> Fax: 937-229-3270

>

> Ohio Relay: 711 (available for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing)

>

> Web Site: http://go.udayton.edu/learning

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman12.u.washington.edu

> http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>



--
Robert Spangler
Disability Services Technical Support Specialist
rspangler1 at udayton.edu
Office of Learning Resources (OLR) - RL 023
Ryan C. Harris Learning & Teaching Center (LTC)
University of Dayton | 300 College Park | Dayton, Ohio 45469-1302
Phone: 937-229-2066
Fax: 937-229-3270
Ohio Relay: 711 (available for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing)
Web Site: http://go.udayton.edu/learning
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