What are PDF types?
• Image only – use for images! File types include TIFF, JPG,
JPEG. Use TIFF for printing, JPG or JPEG for web, online or digital-only use.
• High Quality Print – use for things that will be printed. • Image + text – scan the PDF and apply OCR (Optical
Character Recognition). Images are kept as images but text is converted to real digital text that is searchable and can read by screen readers. Use for readings, text-based documents,
forms, anything going into student course packs or required reading for employees such as policies.
• Archival and accessibility standards for libraries and archives
PDF/A, PDF/X, PDF/E & PDF/UA – types of image + text PDFs that meet various library and archive archival/research material standards. PDF/UA maximizes accessibility of a PDF.
Why Accessible PDFs?
Accessibility involves two key issues:
•
How users with disabilities access electronic information
•How electronic information creators and developers
enable web pages, PDFs, documents, and software to
function for individuals with disabilities and work with
assistive devices and technology used by individuals with
disabilities.
Why worry about accessibility?
•
It’s the right thing to do.
PDFs and Xerox Multi-Function Devices
• Log in to the Xerox MFD printer/copier/scanner.
• Select Network Scanning. Many academic department Xerox’s
are set to do OCR scanning by default.
• To choose OCR scanning, the tab Network Scanning opens by
default. Tap the tab Filing Options.
• Select File Format.
• Select PDF then PDF again then tap the Searchable Text
button then the green check mark for Searchable Text. Last select the language the document is in and tap Save.
• Next tap the tab Advanced Settings. • Select Resolution.
• Select for Resolution at least 400 DPI for a high quality OCR
Check if PDFs are OCR or Not
To check for an OCR PDF for Acrobat Reader:• Search for Characters that Appear on the Page. Non-OCR
PDFs will not have characters.
• Use the find command in Acrobat to search for text that
appears on the page. Select Edit > Find and in the search filed type a term that appears on the page.
• If the document was scanned, Acrobat will not find the search
item but will display the message:
“Acrobat has finished searching the document. No matches were found.”
• For long documents check for tags. To do so in the Acrobat
menu go to File > Properties.
• Look for the “Tagged PDF” label in the lower left hand corner of
Check if PDFs are OCR or Not
To check accessibility for a PDF with Adobe Acrobat X Pro:
•
First reveal the Accessibility Tool pane. If it is not already
displayed, select View > Tools > Accessibility from the
Adobe Acrobat X Pro menu. The keyboard method is
Alt+V+ T + A.
•
With the Accessibility Tool Pane revealed, select the
Quick Check panel. The keyboard shortcut is Shift + Ctrl +
6 to check immediately without having to view and use the
Accessibility Tool pane.
Check if PDFs are OCR or Not
Check if PDFs are OCR or Not
Quick Check Results
The Quick Check will generate one of the following
messages when reporting results:
•
This document has logical structure but it is not a Tagged
PDF.
•
This document is not structured, so the reading order may
not be correct. Try different reading orders using the
Reading Preferences panel.
•
No accessibility problems were detected in this quick
check.
•
This document’s security settings prevent access by
Convert Image PDFS to Image + Text
• To use OCR to convert image-only PDFs one at a time to image + text, use Adobe Acrobat Pro > Tools > Recognize Text > In This File. • To use OCR to convert image-only PDFs in a batch process, use
Adobe Acrobat Pro > Tools > Recognize Text > In Multiple Files > Add Files > Add Folders then browse to the folder that contains a set of PDF files to convert. Edit the conversion settings if you need to convert from a language other than English.
• To convert PDFs one at a time and edit for accessibility adding content such as Tags and/or Alternate Text for images/figures, use Adobe Acrobat Pro > Tools > Action Wizard > Create Accessible PDFs.
• Some documents cannot be converted if they were poorly scanned or scanned at low resolution. These documents must be rescanned
using the OCR process.
• You may need to use specialty software to produce OCR scans of documents containing equations or musical notation. Contact the IT Help Desk if you have problems or questions about scanning material with equations, musical notations.
Use Acrobat Pro Batch Processing
• Acrobat Pro has some powerful batch processing options.
• You can put a set of PDFs in a folder and check all the PDFs in
that folder for OCR.
• Once you identify a set of PDFs that need conversion with
OCR to text + image PDFs, you can apply the conversion to the whole folder of PDFs rather than converting one at a time.
• We will post options/instructions shortly for using batch
processing to check PDFs. See the previous slide for the batch processing instructions for OCR of a set of PDFs in a folder.
• If you are already using batch processing we may ask you for
