Hi Ali,
I'm sighted and have plenty of trouble interacting with the world
through my computer. I can't imagine how I would manage to even get as
far as going through all the steps to convert pdfs to text if I were
blind. My hat is off to you.
As a sighted user trying to do my income taxes on Linux in Canada, I
cannot rely on the etext forms for the blind to be up to date. Similar
to you, I convert the PDF tax forms to text. This year I have written a
"text spreadsheet" calculator using awk, tsort and bc/calc that allows
me to mark up the calculations on the forms and then compute the
dependencies, generate calculations and generate the results as an
output text file.
I note the following limitations of converting PDF to text:
1/ I'm unable to convert XFA PDFs to text (fortunately only Ontario
provincial forms, not federal income tax forms so far)
2/ The fine points of the PDF layout seem to get mangled. For example
the Canadian tax forms use indentation to show nested calculations and I
find that harder to see on the text version of the PDF. In general the
etext versions of the tax forms are more sequential, which is easier for
me as a sighted user to program against.
3/ Any calculations built into the PDF are lost. I think my "text
spreadsheet" demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to mark up
calculation steps on text forms sufficiently precisely to allow programs
to calculate them. I would think it should be possible to generate a
common specification for embedding calculations into text files,
allowing programs to be written for this. I would be interested to know
whether it might also be of interest to blind users.
Seems to me that the blind shouldn't have to put up with any of these 3
limitations and various laws may, in theory, give them the clout to
enforce equality. This would also benefit me as a sighted user on Linux.
This is a more specific example of potential synergy between Linux and
users with disabilities.
thanks,
Greg
On 2021-05-04 2:43 p.m., alimiracle wrote:
hi
I'm a blind person
When I want to read the pdf file
I converting it to a text file
have fun and be free
ali miracle
على 4/27/2021 11:34 AM، كتب Greg Knittl:
fyi. pdf accessibility issues may be bigger than just XFA...
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/anyone-know-how-a-blind-person-is-supposed-to-create-or-edit-a-pdf-when-acrobat-isn-t-screen-reader/m-p/10186392?search-action-id=167355598977&search-result-uid=10186392
I see enormous convergence of interest between Linux and the disabled
as we are both 2 small and often overlooked minorities. The disabled
may have more formal legal rights than regular Linux users that we can
piggyback on...
Greg
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