undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmltony6y ago0 comments

Microsoft Word is fully accessible. As for PDFs, as long as they are not scanned, most likely they are accessible. Sometimes forms in PDF files are not very accessible.

And also every now and then I need to read a science paper in PDF format - somehow they still haven't figure out how to make accessible formulas in Latex-generated PDFs, so I'd have to use an OCR called InftyReader to OCR this PDF to get the formulas.

In my experience the worst offenders are drivers for printers and scanners. Every time my printer runs out of ink on my computer it'll show me a dialog, that my screenreader doesn't recognize at all. So by the presence of empty window I'll have to deduce that it's running out of ink. Scanner driver is completely inaccessible, so I had to get a linux box just to use my scanner - at least all the command-line tools are accessible.

0 comments

Hitton6y ago

As for PDF accessibility, it heavily depends on used language. In English it's usually ok, but I saw countless PDFs (some of them written in TeX) in other languages that render ok, but the text actually consists of letters followed by appropriate diacritical mark.

hopesthoughts6y ago

Or those image PDFs that you have to use OCR with and then you get to try and clean them up afterwards because they didn't come out as cleartext. Those are always fun!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsmltony6y ago0 comments

Microsoft Word is fully accessible. As for PDFs, as long as they are not scanned, most likely they are accessible. Sometimes forms in PDF files are not very accessible.

0 comments

Hitton6y ago

hopesthoughts6y ago

Or those image PDFs that you have to use OCR with and then you get to try and clean them up afterwards because they didn't come out as cleartext. Those are always fun!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse