[Athen] [EXTERNAL EMAIL] saving comments for JAWS access in ABBYY FineReader

[Turay, Jeanna]

Hi Wink,
I just saw this.  We have a student who is blind that works with JAWS in Blackboard as well.  I don’t know what projects you have to grade, but what our instructors do for our student is download the paper in Word and put comments into it with “Track Changes” on.  He said that has worked for him using JAWS.

I can try and find out more from the student if it will help you navigate with your student using JAWS and Bb.

Feel free to reach out to me directly if you’d like: Jturay at ccu.edu<mailto:Jturay at ccu.edu>.
Jeanna

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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of foreigntype at gmail.com
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 3:24 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: [EXTERNAL EMAIL] [Athen] saving comments for JAWS access in ABBYY FineReader


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I have a student who is blind in my graduate class who is a JAWS user and cannot access comments in the gradebook In Blackboard made on their submitted written projects. The version of Blackboard that CUNY uses does not provide access to the comments on graded material.

The student asked me to send a separate file of the comments by email and/or grade their written project in Microsoft Word instead of online in the gradebook. If I just provide the comments, they are no longer linked to the text where the corrections belong. Removed from their context, the comments don't make a lot of sense. I downloaded the student's project & proceeded to do a redaction with comments in Abbyy FineReader 15.0. Abbyy FineReader allows me to make the comments using Dragon NaturallySpeaking which is something I can't use in Blackboard either.

Abbyy FineReader allows for a number of different types of export file types, none of which include the comments. Do any of you have any quick ideas or suggestions on how to export the comments and save them so I can send them back to the student? Do you know if JAWS will have access to/read the comments? I spent 4 hours on this so far and still have 10 more papers to grade. I want to make sure the student gets the information that she needs but I can't spend any more time trying to figure out how to enforce the file to do something.

Any tips or suggestions are welcome! Thank you in advance.
Wink Harner
Accessibility Consultant/Alternative Text Production
The Foreign Type
Portland OR
foreigntype at gmailcom<mailto:foreigntype at gmail.com>
480-984-0034
This email was dictated using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Please forgive quirks, misrecognitions, or errata .
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