<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>We follow a similar workflow process as Brian described (and have a similar philosophy in working with MS Word), with one exception - we are still using OmniPage for the OCR processes. That said, we have been evaluating Abbyy FineReader and are looking to switch to that platform based on good output for editing in MS Word and more licensing options.</div><div><br></div><div>For the most part, I have not found one OCR application orders of magnitude better than the other when it comes to the actual OCR process (save for foreign language - I like Abbyy better). Both are solid applications and will get the job done. The difference, IMO, is more on how the interface works for the editing staff and how you can streamline your production workflow to deliver an output format that can be modified easily in MS Word. When you are dealing with high-volume production, small variations in the production workflow and/or training of staff can make a difference in the time spent converting documents.</div><div><br></div><div>If you have the time, try both applications out on a a few test documents. Evaluate the user interface to see which makes more sense to you and do you get the expected output. If you find one version is much easier to interact with due to the user interface and you get the desired results, then you may have found the version that works best for you…of course, it may change with the next update, but at least you can be happy for a short while.</div><div><br></div><div>Take care,</div><div>Sean</div><div><br></div><div><div>Sean Keegan</div><div>Associate Director, Assistive Technology</div><div>Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University</div></div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On Jul 10, 2014, at 2:51 PM, Brian Richwine <<a href="mailto:blrichwine@gmail.com">blrichwine@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,<div><br></div><div>We processed just over 75,000 pages of print materials through ABBYY in the past year for our students with visual impairments. Our process is generally scanning materials in ABBYY or processing a PDF in ABBYY and then working with the document in Microsoft Word. We've used ABBYY for years, and actually our staff prefer to use version 9. They despised versions 10 and 11 due to changes in the ABBYY UI relating to how easy it is to set the order of text recognition blocks. Version 12 is the first version since version 9 that our staff will use. Our editing staff finds they have to spend more time cleaning up the formatting that Version 12 provides than they did in version 9 of ABBYY. Since we are interested in creating a linear, very accessible result, sometimes you have to fight the page formatting that ABBYY and Omnipage provide.</div>
<div><br></div><div>We try Omnipage once in a while and our editing staff report not being able to get a word document that is efficient to work with.</div><div><br></div><div>Word is simply the easiest editing platform for our student editing staff to work in, so we use it as the main editing and formatting tool for almost all of our final alternate media types. As a tool, students are already familiar with it so training can start from there and focus more on the document needs than the tool. It handles multiple languages, we can use MathType for entering math. And we can easily handle page numbering and heading levels to provide for needed document navigation features. We've found that our students with visual impairments prefer having complex or large tables linearized or described instead of marked up accessibly as tables, so the lack of good table markup features in Word hasn't been an issue for us. This works because we make our alternate media for a specific student's needs/preferences and not as a universally accessible document.</div>
<div><br></div><div>From word we can output the result to Word, Daisy, EPUB, PDF, import into duxbury braille software, print in large print, and convert to MP3. The vast number of our clients get the word files we produce, a braille ready file (.brf), or braille. We have a couple users that prefer EPUB so they can access texts via their iOS devices. The EPUB works better than the PDFs converted from word for this (reading it with iBooks or other EPUB iOS apps).</div>
<div><br></div><div>-Brian</div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Manager, UITS Assistive
Technology and Accessibility Centers</p><p class="MsoNormal">Indiana University –
Bloomington / Indianapolis</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://iuadapts.iu.edu/"><span style="color:blue">http://iuadapts.iu.edu</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal">(812) 856-2757 [Direct
Line]</p><p class="MsoNormal">(812) 856-4112 [Office
Number]</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:brichwin@iu.edu"><span style="color:blue">brichwin@iu.edu</span></a><br></p><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 1:39 PM, Al Puzzuoli <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:alpuzz@msu.edu" target="_blank">alpuzz@msu.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72">
<div><p class="MsoNormal">Hi everyone,<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">We are currently using a version of ABBYY Finereader that is several years old. We are trying to decide whether we should upgrade to ABBYY 12, or consider other options, such as the dolphin and IRTI products. We would like flexibility to
produce well marked up content in whatever format the student requests, while still maintaining a workflow that is as simple as possible. I’d be curious as to what others are using, and what the advantages, as well as disadvantages are to those products.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Many thanks,<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Al Puzzuoli<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Information Technologist<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Michigan State University, <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities, 120 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1033<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="tel:517-884-1915" value="+15178841915" target="_blank">517-884-1915</a> <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.rcpd.msu.edu/" target="_blank">http://www.rcpd.msu.edu</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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