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Academic Technology and Creative Services : Spring 2009
PDF Accessibility : Creating Accessible PDFs 33
ADVANCED TOPIC: WORKING WITH SCANNED DOCUMENTS
Scanning Print or Electronic Content into Adobe Acrobat
The scenarios we have presented so far include the conversion of Word Documents and
PowerPoint presentations into Adobe PDF documents. However, there may be times when you
will be creating a PDF document from scanned print materials or from electronic files saved on
a computer. If not created correctly, creating documents from a scanner can result in creating an
image of the print document and not the actual text of the print document. Adobe Acrobat
Professional provides an Optical Character Recognition feature that can be applied when
creating PDF’s from a scanner or from electronic files saved on a computer. The Optical
Character Recognition OCR feature when applied to a document, attempts to recognize all text
and other objects in a document, attempts to infer reading order, and adds tags accordingly.
After creating the PDF from these files, depending on the complexity of the document, you
may still need to edit your document in Adobe Acrobat by adding tags to identify images, tables,
text and other items, and assess reading order. Creating PDF documents correctly from a
scanner and/or from multiple electronic files will enable users of assistive technologies to better
access the content in your PDF documents.
Create an Accessible PDF from Scanner
If you are creating PDF documents from a scanner, you can apply Optical Character
Recognition OCR in Adobe Acrobat during the scanning process. Applying OCR during the
scanning process will prevent you from having to go back into Adobe Acrobat and to apply
OCR and to add tags. To apply OCR do the following: Connect scanner to Acrobat, configure
pre-set if needed, make sure you allow Acrobat to run OCR process, and perform scans. PDF’s
will be searchable and you can repurpose these PDFs by exporting them to text files and other
word processing formats.
Configure Scanner Presets
step 1.
Open Adobe Acrobat Professional.
step 2.
Go to the File menu; select Create PDF > From Scanner > Configure Presets…