Tom and I have been playing with a freeware program from the people who make 
the thunder screen reader.
It's called accessible pdf
and seems to do a much better job than either openbook 9 or k1000 12.
If anybody else is willing to test it on files, let us know.
It says it can make the converted files in to text, but I couldn't find it 
after I created it.
I copied and pasted the text in to word and saved it as a word file.
Here is my message to Tom, I left it as it was because you might want to 
play with thunder, the webie3 browser, or the accessible programs that come 
with webie.
Some of them are very fun, especially if you like listing to Internet Radio.
The accessible podcatcher works well to.
As far as thunder, you certainly could live with it as your screen reader in 
many situations.

I am trying to remember, I think I downloaded the thunder screen reader, and
their browser is webie3.  With that, you get a bunch of programs, named
accessible this and that.
I think that is where accessible pdf came from.  I was extremely impressed.
Let me see.
Try
http://www.webbie.org.uk/index.htm
I actually found it, it's on the thunder page.
http://www.clarosoftware.com/index.php?cPath=314

H T Kaufman MSW LCSW
Adaptive Technology Instructor