[gui-talk] Fwd: accessible pdf

[Steve Pattison]

From: Ross de Vent ross at de-vent.net
To: vip-l vip-l at softspeak.com.au

I came across this info on another list and thought I would pass it on. 
I
just downloaded this program, accessible pdf. I looked at how to use it 
in
its help file and am now looking at a pdf file I have opened. It is
amazingly simple to use especially for someone like me who isn't that
computer savvy. Each drop down menu only has about 2 or 3 items in it,
simple but effective.

Regards, Ross.

(Begin message.)

I came across this program and i thought it would be useful to a lot of
people.

Here is a review:
From: http://magnifiers.org/news.php?action=fullnews

PDF files often are difficult to access by visually impaired. With the 
free
Accessible PDF program for Windows PDF files, if they are not a scanned
image, are now also accessible for visually impaired.

This is realy a program I was waiting for! Most screen readers and 
screen
magnifiers include support for reading PDF files with Adobe Acrobat, but
this is always a difficult job. It is nearly impossible to navigate 
through
a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat with a screen reader, the computer 
becomes
slow and sometimes everything locks. I often loaded the PDF file in 
Adobe
acrobat Reader and saved it as text, but the result mostly was not what 
you
expected.
With Acccessible <http://www.accessiblepdf.com/>  PDF from ClaroRead
<http://www.claroread.com/>  all these problems are finished and what is
also good news is that accessible PDF is open source software and free!
After downloading Accessible PDF a wizard helps you install the program 
on
your computer. After installing, you can launch Accessible PDF and open 
a
PDF file with the File -> Open menu. Accessible PDF gives you a message 
that
the file is "running". After clicking the OK button you can start 
reading.
Accessible PDF has 5 menus on the menubar. File, Edit, View, Options and
Help. With the File menu you can open PDF files, save a PDF to TXT or 
HTML
format and Exit the Accessible PDF program.
The Edit menu includes common options like Cut, Copy, Paste and Select 
All.
Interesting is the View menu including the options, Text, Webpage, Zoom 
In
and Zoom Out. With Text view you get a text version of the PDF file. The
text view is very useful for those using a screen reader or 
text-to-speech
program. Very nice in this text view is, that you can navigate through 
the
PDF file. For example all the items in the table of contents are links. 
You
can see, hear or feel this, because the word Link followed by a number, 
is
placed before a navigation item. Also reading features included in most
professional screen magnifiers like ZoomText, Lunar and Magic work here.
With Webpage you can switch to a webpage view of the PDF file. Users of 
a
braille display are recommended to maximize the Accessible PDF program 
by
pressing ALT + Spacebar and pressing M, because otherwise the braille
display does not properly follow the cursor.

I tested Accessible PDF with a PDF file of 2 MB in size. After saving it 
as
Webpage a HTML file results of 210 KB. It was nearly impossible to load 
this
HTML file in Internet Explorer with my screen reader Supernova, but with
Accessible PDF it is no problem.
The Zoom In and Zoom Out options in the View menu are very helpful for 
those
who need more magnification, but magnification has its limitation.
I also find a bug here. If you select a black background color and white
text color in the Options menu, pressing ctrl+j to Zoom In, results in 
black
Text Color and Black background color, which nobody can read, accept 
those
using Text-to-Speech or a braille display.
As I already wrote with the Options menu you can change Text and 
Background
color. Here you also can change the Font style.
Concluding: Accessible PDF is really a great help for those having 
problems
reading PDF files with Adobe acrobat Reader!

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
Windows Live Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963