[Athen] Editing PDFs with a Screen Reader

[Robert Spangler]

Thank you!  Where can I find this setting?  Worth looking into.


On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 11:13 AM Andrea L. Dietrich <adietrich at cornell.edu>
wrote:


> For chapter splitting, there’s actually a setting in Acrobat where you can

> tell the program to split on “top-level bookmarks,” and it just exports all

> the chapters separately. IDK how well that would work with a screen reader

> but it’s less time-consuming than printing each PDF to a file individually,

> in my experience.

>

>

>

> Just FYI – sorry I can’t speak to the rest of your questions, since I’m

> sighted.

>

>

>

> Good luck!

>

>

>

> -Andi :)

>

>

>

> --------------------------

>

> Andrea Dietrich

>

> Cornell University

>

> Student Disability Services

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>

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>

> Ithaca, NY 14853

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> http://sds.cornell.edu

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>

>

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

> Behalf Of *Robert Spangler

> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 4, 2018 10:54 AM

> *To:* Access Technology Higher Education Network <

> athen-list at u.washington.edu>

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

>

>

>

> 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

>

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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

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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

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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
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