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Re: NVDA's built-in OCR Capabilities

Quentin Christensen
 

Steve,

That's a very contradictory point!

It's true that NVDA does not have the facility to let you scan a hardcopy document with a scanner directly, and we would also argue that is the realm of scanning software rather than your screen reader.  Indeed, part of your Jaws cost goes towards the OCR license, so you could use NVDA and purchase a program like Abbyy FineReader which would give you similar functionality.

We're always open to ideas on how to improve NVDA.  For something like this, we would either need a full OCR program which was free we could incorporate, or a paid add-on (or add-on which interfaced with a paid OCR program) which users could choose to use.

Quentin.

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 11:20 PM Steve Nutt <steve@...> wrote:

Still doesn’t let you scan from a scanner or camera though, without any add-on. I think that’s where JAWS has the edge, though I would posit that OCR scanning is not really the function of a screen reader, beyond scanning the current screen, so I think that NVDA is right to not build this in natively.

 

All the best


Steve

 

From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Brian Vogel
Sent: 09 September 2022 16:48
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] NVDA's built-in OCR Capabilities

 

On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 10:34 AM, Steve Nutt wrote:

Not as far as I know with NVDA,

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Thanks.

Then for those who are dealing with documents, whether short or long (I've done documents in the hundreds of pages), that they know they'll be referring to again and again or want to share with others, I offer the following:  Using Tracker Software’s PDF-Xchange Viewer to OCR Process Image Scanned PDFs

It's not particularly labor intensive when you know that you need to reference a given PDF over and over again and only want to have to do OCR processing once.  Tracker also supplies multiple language packs beyond the "core four" at no charge.  I had a client once who was using PDF-Xchange Viewer to OCR process scanned PDFs in Swedish.

I've also encouraged my clients who were grad students, who kept being given image scanned PDFs created years ago, to OCR process them this way then give the resulting file back to their professor, asking them to replace the one they've been using that has no text layer, so future blind students don't have to do this at all.
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Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044  

It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it . . . for the supreme act of judgment and selection.

       ~ Irving Babbitt



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Quentin Christensen
Training and Support Manager
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