John,

Regarding your interest in a program that will help you fill in
scanned forms.

Assuming that you are starting with a hard copy form, scanning it
with an O C R (Optical Character Recognition) software, and want
your resulting form to look as if you typed directly onto the
original, I suggest the following:

1. Simply scan the form into a normal word processing program.

There are likely to be solid lines on the hard copy original form
to indicate the areas that need to be filled in.

2. The O C R scanning will probably replicate the correct
locations and lengths of these solid lines with rows of
underlines.

3. For these rows of underlines, mark their beginning points with
the word "Start", and their ending points with the measurements
that label them, such as line 5.5, position 7.2 -- a necessity
because the ending points are going to move around, and you'll
want to know where they originally terminated.

4. Then delete these rows of underlines, now in between the
markings, and type your response text in the areas where the
lines were.

5. Then block the text that you just typed and underline all of
it (e.g. F8 in WordPerfect) to restore those deleted rows of
underlines. If you need or desire to extend this restored line,
manually type in additional underlines until the label that marks
the ending point of the original line is in the same location
that it labels.

6. Finally, delete the markings that you typed in at the
beginnings and endings of the rows of underlines.


That should do it John.

If anybody on this list is satisfied with the clarity and
thoroughness of my response, please let it serve as a standard.

Peter Seymour



At 04:27 PM 8/10/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Can anyone suggest an application that scan and convert a paper
form into an
>electronic version that can be filled out and printed by someone
using a
>screen reader?
>
>
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VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
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http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html