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Hi 
Google do seem to be a bit evil and unsupportive sometimes. Oddly they
were on the Advisory Board for TDF when they removed ODF support for their
products! - or sometime around then. Apple were based on BSD, a
brother/sister to Gnu&Linux, but went off in a proprietary/secretive
direction. "Google Summer of Code" and many of their other things are
great but they definitely tend to do odd things at others.
Regards from
a Tom
Hi tom,
Please don't send direct to me, I'm on the list, and when you do I get
two emails. Just send to the list. thanks...
The fact that Pdfs are somewhat editable by quite a few programs now but
only properly editable by Adobe's expensive Pdf editor doesn't mean that
the format is meant to be editable. It's a square peg in a round hole.
I'm not sure what your point is. We aren't talking about editing PDFs,
we're talking about PDF fillable forms... two entirely different things.
Hi
+1
I totally agree. Being able to access an alternative is almost always good
imo/ime.
Different use-cases often require slightly different tools or a
jack-of-all-trades. MSO tries to be jack-of-all-trades but ends up being
such a horribly bloated mess that it significantly slows things down quite
a bit. I prefer the FOSS idea of finding a good-enough tool for the job
and then gradually finding better and better ones if i specialise.
Ironically your last sentence explains the difference between "free" as
used in FOSS compared to bargain basement deals - but without much of the
cultishness. (a fine band btw)
Regards from
a Tom
Tanstaafl:
The newer word for "Handicapped" is "*Differently Able*".
I deal with, and a charter member, of the Kiwanis organization called Aktion Club of Elmira.
Every member is an Adult who has a physical or mental issue that some would use the older word "disabled" or *Differently Able*. I myself have had 3 strokes and a set of physical injuries that gave me 100% for Social Security Disability. The "handicapped parking" sign is now called "Accessible Parking". That "differently able" life category does not mean I cannot do nothing, but I do a lot of things differently sometimes. I lost a lot of programming skills [mostly mainframe languages] with the strokes, but I am not giving up on relearning some of these.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
"People who seek to violate MY Rights"
Yes you have the right to not give up your intellectual property away for free.
Yes, we need to have a good way to create a fill in PDF form to be saved and sent to someone else. This is what the US Tax editable PDF fill in form does.
There is a option in the "export as" > PDF that is called "Create PDF Form". Can there be a link to making a "Form", like for a data base input or data entry form? If you create a form and then save it. Then export to PDF and use the Create PDF form option and choose the file format of PDF. I have never tried this, but within the help system.
I found the "create editable PDF form" in the Help > "LibreOffice help" system.
Wow, I guess I touched a nerve, which certainly wasn't my intent. I was
just trying to share a document from the creators of the PDF format that
explains how to make PDF forms accessible to the visually impaired.
You may be right -- depending on your profession -- that you have the
"absolute Right to NOT provide accessible ANYTHING to ANYONE." However,
as a teacher, I have an obligation under U.S. Federal law to make
"reasonable accommodations" for my visually impaired students. I don't
have the option of telling them to find a teacher or a college that will
provide services they can access. Of course, if I did tell them to look
elsewhere, my students would exercise their rights under the ADA to sue
the school and me, and they would prevail which would cost me and my
college oodles of bucks. So, you're right, "Freedom ain't Free."
However, all this talk about freedoms, rights, laws, and lawsuits misses
the point. I'm a teacher, and I *want* my students to learn. This means
if I have a visually impaired student, I *want* that student to have
access to my written documents. I don't need a law to impose that desire
on me. I don't need the threat of a lawsuit to motivate me to do the
best for my students.
Since I have never had visually impaired students in the past, this
issue has never before arisen for me, which is why I was at first
surprised to read Jonathon's non-legal (but helpful) advice. Since
reading his post, I have been digging deeper and learning more. As I
stated before, this issue isn't limited to PDF files although they have
their own set of unique challenges.
Many of the suggestions about making documents accessible apply to all
file formats and simply involve good document design. For example,
suggestions include making proper headers that can link to a table of
contents. This requires using Heading styles rather than just bolding a
few words and calling it a heading. Adobe also suggests creating a table
of contents and putting cross-reference bookmarks throughout the
document to make it more easily navigable. These suggestions force a
user to learn how to properly format a document, rather than following
the old typewriter model of helter skelter direct formatting.
I'm finding all of this fascinating. In the past couple days, I have
also discovered the screen reader that came with my Linux Mint 18. I've
been playing with it on various file formats. I created an HTML with
AsciiDoc, and it read it quite nicely. It also read an .ODT file without
difficulty. For some reason, it would read a .TXT file opened in LO, but
not in Geany, and, it didn't read PDFs created with either LO or LyX.
Now, these were quick and dirty tests without any tweaking of the files
or any settings, so these experiences are not at all the final word. I'm
sure I can make everything work properly as I learn more, but this does
indicate that some methods will require more work than others.
Virgil
I am not using Gleany, but check the encoding used by LO and Gleany as there are different ways to encode a txt file. The more common encoding schemes are variants of UTF-8 and ISO-8859. For LO you can show the encoding by going to Save As... and check Edit filter settings. In Gleany there should be some sort of drop-down menu to select the encoding you want.
I though it time to re-title this thread as we (I) had sort of hijacked
the original post.
I am not using Gleany, but check the encoding used by LO and Gleany as
there are different ways to encode a txt file. The more common
encoding schemes are variants of UTF-8 and ISO-8859. For LO you can
show the encoding by going to Save As... and check Edit filter
settings. In Gleany there should be some sort of drop-down menu to
select the encoding you want.
Thank you for the suggestion. Actually, I was opening the exact same
.txt file in LO and Geany. I tried it again, and I discovered that, with
Geany, if I just open the file and sit and wait, the Screen Reader
eventually starts up and reads the file from start to finish, but if I
click the cursor anywhere in the file, the Screen Reader stops
completely, and I can't seem to make it start again. If I open the same
file in LO, it starts reading the file and stops at the end of each
line. As I move the cursor down the page, the Reader reads each line,
but I have to manually scroll down the page. So far, it has read
everything I have opened in LO.
I tried to get Screen Reader to read an AsciiDoc file, and it just told
me that the file was not a proper markdown file. I then took out the
AsciiDoc codes and replaced them with Markdown codes, and the Reader
read it fine.
I still haven't gotten the Screen Reader to read a .pdf file, no matter
how I create it, or what settings I put into it. Again, I'm sure this is
just due to my ignorance.
I'm not necessarily asking for advice, but I won't turn it away. I am
truly just learning the Linux Mint Screen Reader. I didn't realize I
even had it until this past Thursday when I discovered it quite by
accident. At this point, I'm just playing to see what it reads, and what
hoops I have to jump through to get it to read certain file formats. My
next test will be with LaTeX files.
I'm sure the day will come in my teaching career when I will need to
have files that are accessible to the visually impaired. I don't want to
have to reinvent the wheel when that day comes.
Virgil
What is that old saying about opinions?
Again, (properly constructed) fillable PDF forms is the only way to go.
Do you have any information/opinion about various forms of markdown files (i.e. Markdown, RestructureText, AsciiDoc).
What happens when a screen reader meets markup language depends upon:
# The program used to open the document;
** Some programs display raw markup;
** Some programs display the presentation;
** Some programs display both the markup, and the presentation;
# The specific screen reader;
** A screen reader I used to use, intercepted <ALT><B> keyboard commands
(^1);
** Strings within a file are occasionally treated as keyboard commands.
Whilst this is usually a bug, it can be both extremely annoying, and
even more difficult to track down;
# How "Reading Punctuation" in the screen reader is configured;
** Typically, one can choose between none/some/most/all. My guess is
that most "experienced" screen reader users, set that to either "none",
or "some"(^2). Setting it to "all" can be extremely irritating to listen
to.
# The operating system being used;
** Operating systems intercept keyboard commands before either the
screen reader, or the program can. Once upon a time, I had a screen
reader that used <ALT><F4> to open either an extension, or an external
program. I don't remember which it was supposed to, but the inevitable
result was the program I was using, was closed. That same program had a
bug, that threw certain strings it read, straight to the OS, as if they
were keyboard commands;
I'd avoid anything that uses HTML markup tags. (^4)
The only suggestion I can make, in terms of markup files, is to
experiment with the a11y tools you have available. Some, probably most
colleges and universities in the US, have a person in the IT department,
whose primary function is to check a11y compliance. As oft as not, these
individuals are willing to do limited testing of material for local
school teachers. (This is not an official part of their job. They do
it, because it is both good PR, and acts as an early warning system for
"unusual" disabilities (^5) that the college will have to accommodate.)
Would a screen reader get tripped up by the various formatting tags (* A Bulleted item; _italics_, *boldface*)?
Maybe. Maybe not.
If a Braille Display Monitor is used in conjunction with the screen
reader, then anything is possible. (^3)
Where most people fail, is in creating tables that make sense, when
using a Braille Display Monitor. In general, it is much easier to
rewrite the table, as a series of sentences, than to format it, so that
it makes sense when reading it in a Braille Display Monitor.
^1: Braille Display Monitors will frequently change <ALT><B> to ⠳.
^2: This is why punctuation of blind, and deaf-blind people can be
"strange". They accidentally type ">", instead of ".", and because
punctuation is turned off, they don't realize that they made an error.
^3: In theory, Braille Display Monitors display the glyph as its comes
in, with no alterations, or modifications. Whilst the practice is
usually the same, I've come across a few monitors that have switches for
either "raw mode" or "translated mode", and if the latter is selected,
then an option to translate everything into either Grade 1, Grade 2, or
Grade 3.0 Braille, regardless of what is input.
Testing Braille Display Monitor compatibility is an extremely expensive
proposition. Cheap monitors run US$50.00 per cell. A good Braille
Display Monitor runs around US$100 per cell.
^4: The major problem with HTML, is that most software that claims to
utilize it, has a broken implementation. Whilst brokenness such as
<BACKGROUND Color="000000"> within the text --- not markup --- causing
the entire background to be black, is no longer common, there are enough
other oddities, that there is a divergence between the desired effect,
and what the viewer sees.
^5: By way of example, deaf, blind, and is confined to a wheelchair.
Things that make life easy for one group of individuals can make life
impossible for a different group. Things can become extremely
complicated when an individual is a member of both of those groups.
jonathon
Jonathon,
Thank you so much for all your information. It is obvious that I have a
bundle to learn about all of this.
Since asking your thoughts about markdown text files, I discovered a
screen reader provided with my Linux Mint 18. I've been playing with it
with various file formats. So far, it seems to like plain Markdown and
the HTML files it produces (at least for the simple text files I've
created -- i.e., no tables, graphics, etc.) Whether in Markdown source
text or the resulting HTML, it recognizes the heading levels. However,
it reads right over other tags, such as **boldface** without
interpretation. It even ignores quotation marks (which I had "smartened"
with Smartypants, which could be a problem for a blind person not able
to discern what are my words or the words of someone I'm quoting.) I've
also found that if I load anything *but* a Markdown file into my Geany
text editor, the screen reader tells me that the file doesn't have a
Markdown file type and refuses to read it.
The screen reader that comes with Mint is Orca and I am truly just
starting to learn it. For example, while writing this email, I took a
break to search for Orca preferences and just literally found out how to
access them through the terminal. So, I'm less than a noob on a11y tools
(I also just learned what a11y means.)
I obviously have never had a vision impaired student in any of my
college courses, so these issues have never arisen. However, I have used
various resources for my work. For example, for slide presentations, I
have used LO Impress, LaTeX (Beamer class) and AsciiDoc's Slidy backend.
Impress has its native ODF file format, LaTeX produces a PDF and
AsciiDoc Slidy produces an HTML presentation. In addition to showing the
presentations during class, I provide my students with the files so they
can read them in their own studies. Over this summer, I will experiment
to see how well each file format works with the Orca reader.
I also give a lot of essay style assignments where I create a document
with the questions, email the file to my students and have them fill in
the answers and email the completed assignment back to me. So far, as I
mentioned in my original post on this thread, I have used LO to create
the document and then I have shared it with my students as an MS Word
DOC format as most of them use Word, which is provided to them free as
students. It has worked well, but I never considered visual a11y concerns.
Tanstaafl has suggested fillable PDF files, but so far, I haven't gotten
Orca to read any PDF file I've created (fillable or not), whether
created through LO or LaTeX. I'm sure the problem is my infantile
understanding of the tools, so I'll keep learning.
In the meantime, I am toying with the thought of using plain text for my
take home assignments, either with or without Markdown tags (although
Orca reads my plain Markdown heading tags (#, ##, etc.) very well). As I
think about it, my take home assignments don't *need* any formatting as
they're not intended to be printed out. They are, in fact, just plain text.
Thank you again for all your information and help. You've introduced me
to a whole new world I had never considered, perhaps because, being
fairly well sighted, I never thought much about the difficulties facing
the visually impaired.
I'm reminded of the courthouse where I worked in my lawyering days. It
was constructed in the 1970s when split-level construction was all the
rage. It was built on four levels and the only way to access each level
was through short flights of stairs (about 10 steps each). The
architects obviously had working legs for nobody ever thought how a
wheelchair bound litigant was supposed to get to the courtroom on the
fourth level, or the clerk's office on the third level, or the restrooms
on the first level, not to mention the main entrance on the second
level. It was all idiotic.
Virgil
hi.
can someone please tell me that how can i use entire document in libreoffice?
i wish that hear all of my documents, not only one line or one
paragraph and use keyboard to continue reading.
i use nvda screen reader on windows xp.
I wish I could be more help. I'm just starting to play with screen
readers. I've been using the Orca screen reader that comes with Linux
Mint 18, and I've noticed the behavior you mention. With some file types
and programs, Orca will read the entire document as a continuous stream,
but with others, like LO, it reads one line at a time.
I've noticed that the behavior depends on both file type and the program
in which the file is loaded.
For example, my Orca will not read a plain text file loaded in Geany,
but it will read the same file loaded in Gedit or LO, but only one line
at a time.
Orca will read an HTML file in Firefox as a continuous stream of text so
long as I don't click on the document on the screen. If I click on the
document screen, it goes to reading only one line at a time, but since
I'm in a browser, I don't get a cursor arrow to tell me which line is
being read.
With any of the programs, I've found that once Orca starts reading one
line at a time, I can just scroll down using the down-arrow key to
continue reading.
I have found a way, through the terminal, to open Orca's preferences,
but I just haven't had time to play with it in any more depth.
...and try as I might, I have yet to find a way to get Orca to read a
PDF file, even a tagged PDF created in LO.
I have to believe that some of my issues are the operator errors of an
ignorant noobie, so I'll keep working at it as time permits. If I learn
anything new, I'll post it for others who may be interested.
Virgil
zahra a wrote
hi.
can someone please tell me that how can i use entire document in
libreoffice?
i wish that hear all of my documents, not only one line or one
paragraph and use keyboard to continue reading.
i use nvda screen reader on windows xp.
You can not and that is a well know issue with the accessible tree structure
exposed in LibreOffice [1][2].
It also affects the ORCA screen reader for Linux based users.
=-ref-=
[1] tdf#91739 <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91739>
[2] nvda#4119 <https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/4119>
hi stuart.
i heard that if we use full screen, we can read the entire document.
i tested this method and only nvda read two pages for me.
then, i realized that nvda stops reading when it sees empty lines and paragraph.
how can i remove all empty line and paragraphs to see whether it may
read my books entirely?
thanks so much for your support and help as always, God bless you!
I use Calc to run a monthly (non-financial) spreadsheet for a small charity I'm secretary to - a page per month, client cases on the vertical, various circumstantial details across the columns, SUM at the bottom of each column, the first of them a simple 'tally' column ( '1' entered for each caes to give a monthly total.)
Last month's page had 22 rows. When I came to sum up and report, I realised the tally total wasn't in fact agreeing with the other totals. The same formula applies (they are all drag-copied from an original entry on a page some months back), but the SUM total in the Tally column is simply wrong - out by 1 to everything else.
Since it was such a small page, it was easily spotted and allowed for. In a larger page, it might have been a 2-coffee hold-up.
I report it more out of curiosity than anything else. Has anyone come across similar instances ?
Sincerely
Ian Graham
Wales
UK