Scanning to PDF

Scanning to PDF has some advantages and disadvantages when compared to scanning to Microsoft Word or other word processors. If you're unsure of what Optical Character Recognition scanning actually does or how it can help people with a variety of difficulties then please read my Overview of OCR.

Whether you choose this option depends on your needs and the software that you have available to you (the free version of OmniPage SE bundled in with many scanners does not support PDF). You can scan to PDF using TextHelp Read & Write Gold.

A scan to PDF allows the most true image of your document to appear on screen. The resulting PDF is nothing more than a high-quality photocopy of the original document displayed in a PDF view like Adobe Reader. However the OCR software has still attempted to read the text and this is immediately available to be read as synthetic speech.

Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader is the most popular program that people use to view PDF files. It is available as a free download , although be warned that Adobe try to bundle in other software with the download such as the Yahoo toolbar and a free image-organizing program. If you don't want these other programs make sure un untick the appropriate boxes.

Text-to-speech is built in to Adobe Reader version 6.0 and later. Not all PDF documents are accessible as the authors may be unaware of the method or the need but you shouldn't have a problem with any document that you scan in using OCR software unless it uses an extremely complex layout.

You can use the following key shortcut to start and stop the synthetic speech:

CTRL+SHIFT+E

There is further information on Adobe Reader's text-to-speech feature on their accessibility website.