It's possible that due to the untagged document, Microsoft Word could not preserve the structure of tables, diagrams, and overall formatting. You can submit feedback to the publishers, explaining the issues encountered while reading the document in apps like Adobe Reader. This feedback, focusing on the reading experience, could inspire them to consider the PDF document's accessibility. If they integrate your suggestions, even a small improvement in accessibility could be achieved, possibly generating at least 1-2% more accessible employment.
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Tarun Vashisth Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2025 3:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AI] Seeking Help: Issue with MS Word files created through ABBYY FineReader Dear Shankar, Thank you for your suggestion to try MS Word for OCR instead of ABBYY FineReader. I did a quick comparison and wanted to share my initial observations. When I opened a PDF that earlier had unnecessary spaces within words—like in the word "introduction," which was previously being read as broken or distorted by my screen reader—MS Word automatically corrected this, and the reading experience became much smoother. I was genuinely pleased with this improvement. However, when I used MS Word to OCR another PDF file, I noticed that while it handled the text fairly well, it distorted the table formats. This is where ABBYY still performs better—it preserves the structure of tables, diagrams, and overall formatting much more accurately, which is essential for reading research articles and journal papers that often contain complex layouts. Given that research papers belong to different publishers and vary greatly in formatting and often contain models, tables, and charts, ABBYY’s layout-preserving capabilities still prove quite useful for my needs. I’ll continue experimenting, but I thought these initial findings might be useful to share with you and others in the group. Further, any comprehensive solution will greatly help. Warm regards, Dr. Tarun Vashisth On Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 2:41 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Dear Tarun, ABBYY is a deprecated tool and is no longer usable. Microsoft Word offers several features, and PDF conversion is also a great supporting tool. To open a PDF document, do the following: Open a blank document, then use the Open File option. Select the PDF document, click OK on the convert confirmation dialogue, and wait for the content to load. Check for the results. If you face any issues, please come back and ask for help. From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Tarun Vashisth Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2025 12:50 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [AI] Seeking Help: Issue with MS Word files created through ABBYY FineReader Dear Access Indians, I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to seek your guidance on a persistent issue I face as a visually impaired professional who relies on text-to-speech software and OCR tools for reading documents. I use ABBYY FineReader to convert PDF files into Word documents for reading. However, I’ve noticed that after conversion, some words contain subtle but problematic spacing between characters. For example, a word like “spend” may get rendered as “sp end”, where the space is not visually prominent but is detected by my screen reader, leading to mispronunciation and comprehension difficulties. This severely hampers my reading experience and understanding of the text. I wanted to ask if any of you have faced similar issues and how you deal with them. Do you use any specific techniques, software settings, or post-processing tools to correct or minimize this error? Your insights would be immensely helpful. Warm regards Dr. Tarun K. Vashisth -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAN0zVQ4PWOgvhz5ybaD9X3EPB79%3DD07piZURwnngXu4ob2cmEQ%40mail.gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAN0zVQ4PWOgvhz5ybaD9X3EPB79%3DD07piZURwnngXu4ob2cmEQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/006a01dbfc7a%24e306b980%24a9142c80%24%40gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/006a01dbfc7a%24e306b980%24a9142c80%24%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- T K Vashisth Assistant Professor University Business School Panjab University Regional Centre, Ludhiana Mob. 99152-95810, 95691-48518 visits us: http://ubsl.puchd.ac.in -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAN0zVQ7wVc4fi1gOg6bK9%3DNycAaMWs73z1ZOw7c_AqK9D9O3-w%40mail.gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAN0zVQ7wVc4fi1gOg6bK9%3DNycAaMWs73z1ZOw7c_AqK9D9O3-w%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/000e01dbfc88%246d53c580%2447fb5080%24%40gmail.com.
