If the steps above do not produce a document with searchable and selectable text, please contact disabilities.students mcgill.ca for further assistance.Step 4. Using the methods outlined above will make most PDFs useable with screen readers, however, there are instances where some extra steps need to be taken.
There are also paid applications available for performing OCR scans other than the professional version of Adobe. This will change the look of your document. Here are some web-based OCR options:
It is also important to note that these sites will often convert your PDF into a Word document or another plain text file. However, several of these sites will place restrictions on the size of the document you wish to perform an OCR on and will not let you upload files that are too large. These sites will perform an OCR on documents you upload and then will let you download the result. There are several free options available to accomplish this. One of the easiest is to us a web-based OCR application. If you do not have access to the professional version of Adobe Acrobat, there are other options available to you. The image below highlights this option in a red rectangle. From here you will be able to launch the OCR by clicking on the “In This File” option. Once the “Tools” sidebar is open, click on the “Recognize Text” tab. The image below highlights the “Tools” button in a red rectangle. The first thing to do is to open the “Tools” sidebar by clicking on it in the top right corner of the screen. If you have access to the professional version of Adobe Acrobat, then performing an OCR can be done quickly and easily.
Step Two: how to perform an OCR on a PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro XI This means that an OCR should be performed. See the image below for reference:Īs we can see the image above, the text is not selectable. However, if you are unable to select the text and the entire page is selected instead or you are only able to drag a selection square across the page, this means your computer is not recognizing the text. If the text copy & pastes without a problem, it means that you have a PDF with a good quality OCR! However, if you end up with misspelled words or symbols after pasting, it means that your text is being inaccurately recognized, and this will still cause problems with text-to-speech software. You can test the accuracy by simply copy & pasting text from your PDF into a word document or notepad window. Although, it is important to note that just because the text is selectable it does necessarily mean your computer is accurately recognizing the text, only that it acknowledges the text is there. This means that the text in your document is at least being recognized. Notice in the image above that we are able to select text by clicking and dragging over it. If you can highlight specific text in the PDF document, that means that the text is at least being recognized by your computer. The simplest way to check if a PDF needs to have an OCR performed is to try to highlight text with your cursor. If you are already working with a high-quality PDF, then the first step is to check if an OCR is needed. Because of this, working with documents that are clear and of high quality is important. If the text on the page is blurry or blacked out, an OCR will not return accurate results. Many of the electronic versions of readings and articles that are passed out originate from low-quality scans. The first step is to ensure that you are working with a good quality PDF and this can often be a challenge in a University setting. Optical character recognition with Adobe Acrobat Pro IX Step One: how to tell if a PDF needs to have an OCR performed However, there are steps that can be performed on these documents before they are distributed to students that can eliminate these potential problems.
Often times, low-quality PDFs or PDFs that have not had an optical character recognition (OCR) performed on them will not function properly with these programs.
Many students rely on screen readers and text-to-speech software to access their readings.
But for some learners, simply having access to a digital version of a text may not be enough to ensure that the content is accessible.
Providing digital texts is a great way to make some of your course content more accessible to different learners. Working with articles in PDF format can be extremely useful.