I agree - the text has to be in there for this to work. A good
example of this is the college I used to work at, who scanned all
their past exam papers onto disk and converted the resulting
images to PDF to make them available via the web, without running
them through an OCR. Unfortunately, they told me they just didn't
have the time to check them for accuracy - and being exam papers
they had to be accurate!

Has anyone tried using the Kurzweil 3000 package to scan a PDF
as a webpage and obtain the text? I am working on a package at
the moment to convert PDF to TIFF format files (TIFF is a graphics
file format) and then OCR this. Most OCR packages accept TIFF
files as input. A round-about way of doing this could be to use the
package GHOSTSCRIPT to convert the PDF to TIFF then use your
favourite OCR package to convert this. But, this really gets those
people making PDFs without also producing an accessible HTML
or text version at the same time off the hook, I fear.

Ian Francis


On 9 Apr 2001, at 8:41, Richard Jones wrote:

> It must be said that these services to not work for many, many .pdf
> documents.  If you have a straight text document, it may work.  If you
> have a document with graphics, columns, and odd fonts you will get
> garbage.  The there is not way to convert an unstructured document and
> guarantee accessibility. Adobe 5.0 claims to provide a method of
> adding structure to a document.  However, it is not automatic,
> difficult to use, and requires extra time to set up.  Adobe is still
> an inaccessible format.  As the DOJ web site on 508 says put it in
> another format as well as .pdf.
>
> Richard R. Jones
> Assistant Director
> Disability Resources for Students
> Arizona State University
> (480) 965-6045
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Francis [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, April 09, 2001 7:19 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: pdf translation service
>
>
>
> Adobe's online conversion tools page is at
>
> http://access.adobe.com/onlinetools.html
>
>
> Here's the text of the page about email conversion:
>
>
> The e-mail based PDF accessibility tools have been updated. You can
> now submit multiple URLs in a single e-mail message as well as submit
> PDF files to Adobe as MIME attachments. See below for more details.
>
>
>
> Adobe PDF Conversion by E-mail
>
>
> There are three e-mail options you can use to convert Adobe PDF
> documents to a format that is more accessible to screen reading
> software. The e-mail address you use depends on the conversion format
> you want, plain (ASCII) text or HTML, and whether the PDF is on the
> Internet or local media.
>
>
> Option 1
>
> If the Adobe PDF is on the Internet, you can mail the URL (web
> address) of the PDF in the body of an email message to
> [log in to unmask] (for plain text) or to [log in to unmask] (for
> HTML). The convertor will mail back the translation of the PDF file.
> You can submit multiple URLs in a single e-mail.
>
>
> Tip: Some URLs are very long and cumbersome to type. Cutting and
> pasting the URL into the mail message will save you some keystrokes.
>
>
> Option 2
>
> If the Adobe PDF is on local media, such as a hard drive, CD-ROM, or
> internal server, it can be submitted as a MIME attachment to an e-mail
> message. All converted Adobe pdf-documents will be sent back
>
> to the sender as MIME attachments. For plain text, mail the attached
> PDF to [log in to unmask] For HTML, mail the attached PDF to
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> Option 3
>
>
> A service hosted by Trace Research Center also allows you to convert
> Adobe PDF documents.
>
>
> You can either mail the URL of the Adobe PDF or attach the Adobe PDF
> document itself to your email message and send it to
> [log in to unmask] (for plain text) or to
> [log in to unmask] (for HTML). The convertor will mail back
> the translation of the PDF file.
>
>
> Adobe would like to thank Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden and the Trace
> Research Center (http://trace.wisc.edu) for helping us host this
> service.
>
>
>
>
> On 9 Apr 2001, at 14:11, Adrian Higginbotham wrote:
>
>
> > hi all:
>
> > can someone please remind me of one of the Email pdf to text
>
> > translation services. I thought I knew the trace address by heart
> > but
>
> > bounced mail in my in-box says otherwise.
>
> >
>
> > thanks
>
> >
>
> > Adrian Higginbotham.
>
> >
>
> > SURFACE (Salford University, Research Focus on Accessible
>
> > Environments).
>
> >
>
> > tel: (44_-161-2953949,
>
> > fax (44)-161-2955011,
>
> > Email [log in to unmask]
>
> > textphone (44)-161-2953599.
>
> >
>
> > web: http://www.scpm.salford.ac.uk/surface/
>
> >
>
>
>
>