Hi Betsy
The NVDA add-on called NAO is very useful
with PDF’s, I used it to read the solicitors documents for
my daughters divorce, so I know it works well. Below is the
Help text taken from the add-on which explains how to use
the features. I hope it can b of use to you.
Cheers
Chris
Nao - NVDA Advanced OCR
• Authors: Alessandro Albano, Davide De
Carne, Simone Dal Maso
• Download stable version
• NVDA compatibility: 2019.3 and beyond
Nao (NVDA Advanced OCR) is an addon that
improves the standard OCR capabilities that NVDA provides on
modern Windows versions. While NVDA standard command uses
Windows OCR to recognize the screen, NAO is able to make the
OCR on files saved on your hard drive or USB devices. Use
NVDA-Shift-R to recognize any sorts of images and pdf!
Simply put the focus / cursor on the file you desire, don't
open it, but hit NVDA-Shift-r. The document will be
recognized and a simple text window will appear, allowing
you to read the entire content, save it, find text or copy
content to clipboard. Nao is able to handle also multipage
pdf, so if you have a not accessible document, don't worry,
Windows OCR will be able to make the entire work.
System Requirements
The addon works on Windows 10 and Windows
11 systems, since they have OCR capabilities builtin. Nao is
compatible from NVDA version 2019.3, so don't use older
versions of the screen reader. Note that Nao works with
Windows Explorer, on desktop, with Total Commander or
xplorer² filemanager; don't use other software like 7zip or
Winrar, since they are not supported.
Features and commands
• NVDA + Shift + R: recognize any sorts
of images and pdf from file system;
• PgUp / PgDown: move the cursor between
real pages of a multipages document.
• Ctrl + S: save the document in
nao-document format. You can open it again with NVDA + Shift
+ R.
• P: report page number related to the
cursor position, in a multipage document.
• L: report line number at the cursor
position, related to the current page.
• Shift + L: report line number at the
cursor position, related to the whole document.
• G: go directly on a certain page.
• C: copy all text to the clipboard.
• S: save a copy of the document in text
format.
• F: find text and read some words before
and after the string.
• NVDA + Shift + Ctrl + R: take a full
screen shot and recognize it.
• Please note that you can use standard
NVDA commands to explore window and bring focus to an
element. For example you can move with arrow keys and press
enter in a button to activate it. You can also bring the
mouse to your position with NVDA-numpad slash and then click
with left/right keys.
Note that you can customize shortcuts of
Nao simply from the input gestures dialog of NVDA. Open NVDA
menu, go to preferences, and from that submenu select input
gestures dialog. Remember that this feature is not global,
but it works only where Nao can make an ocr. So gestures
will appear only if you are in the desktop, or in file
explorer, Total Commander or Xplorer.
You can also abort a long Ocr process
simply pressing "Cancel" from the progress bar window; this
window also gives you information about the state of the
OCR, updating informations every 5 seconds. You can
configure how to receive progress bar information with the
standard NVDA-u command.
You can find a submenu named Nao, under
the NVDA - Tools - menu. For the moment it contains only an
item that allow you to make a donation, but we will improve
that with new features!
Support and donations
Nao is absolutely free. Anyway, please
remember that this addon is made during spare time of
developers. We'd appreciate any contribute that you could
give us! If you think our work is good and improve your
life, a Consider to make a donation.
Do you want to report a bug, suggest new
features, translate the addon in your language? We have the
email for you! Just write to support@...
and we will be happy to help you.
History
2022.1.2
• nao-document file format save and load
capability.
• A documents cache can store the
recognitions to speedup next time opening. If a file is
found in the cache it is not recognized again but the cached
version is opened instead (recognitions parameters must
match).
• Store the last reading position of a
document in the cache metadata.
• Auto purge for documents cache.
• Manual cache clear in tools menu.
• A file can be now recognized directly
from a windows explorer "compressed folder".
• Better invalid files check.
• Better Windows Explorer compatibility
using different file selection alternatives: first try with
Shell.Application in NVDA, then try Shell.Application in
PowerShell then fallback to manual browse.
• OCR engine keeps the language setting
during the whole recognition process even if it is changed
during a multi-page recognition.
• OCR queue to recognize from multiple
sources.
• Hotkey PgDown at the last page of a
document goes to the end of the document reporting the line
number.
• Windows temporary folder is used for
file converters tools instead the plugin folder (better
performance on NVDA portable).
• Romanian translation and update of the
simplified chinese translation.
2022.1.1
• Support for DjVu file format.
• Support for multipage tiff files.
• PDF encoding bug fix for operating
systems in chinese language.
• Manual addon update under the NVDA -
Tools - menu.
• Compatibility starting from NVDA
2019.3.
2022.1
• Automatic addon update.
• Spanish and French translations
updated.
2021.2
• OCR of pdf and images are presented in
a new text window, with some hotkeys for simple operations.
• Support for the Xplorer filemanager.
• Nao shortcuts are customizable from the
Input Gestures Dialog of NVDA.
• Nao works only where possible, so if
you are in a not supported window, the hotkey will be
ignored by the addon; this solved an important issue where
Excel and Word users couldn't press the NVDA-Shift-r
keystroke, since it was incorrectly intercepted by Nao.
• A long Ocr process can be aborted
simply pressing the "Cancel" button on the progress bar
window.
• Added Turkish, Russian, Spanish,
Chinese and French translations.
• Users can make donations to the
project.
• Fixed a bug with some characters on the
file name that prevents the Ocr to work properly.
2021.1
• first public version!
Sent from Mail for Windows
I wrote to this list about a week ago, I
think, asking how to convert a
scanned PDF and someone wrote me back
with a place to go. I went to it
and used it and thought the file had
saved but it has not. I also
thought I had written down how to do it
but cannot find those
directions. I know it was some place I
had to go on the internet. I hope
the person is still on here who sent that
to me the other week. This
time I will doubly make sure I have the
directions in more than one place.
Thanks for the help of whoever sent it or
someone who may have saved it.
I even looked in my trash folder for it
but cannot find it.
Sorry to bother you all with it again.
this is a file I need for my Lions Club.
Thanks again.
--
Betsy Grenevitch 678-862-3876
