Scanned PDFs

Scanning pages from old text books results in inaccessible documents

Preparing to teach a course requires a lot of work and sometimes you can have a scanned copy of a book in your files. Unfortunately, scanned texts are very inaccessible and create a lot of challenges that prevent participants from reading and studying effectively.

When you come across a scanned PDF, do your best to replace it with a suitable digital document.

Scanned PDFs will get a low accessibility indicator score.

Click on the Accessibility score indicator to find out more and add a description.

 

Explanation of the problem and resources

The file is 0% accessible because it is challenging for participants to read and study the material.

Click on What this means to get an explanation.

 

Upload a text based version

Can you find a text version of the document? Select Yes and upload a digital text version to Ally to improve your accessibility score.

 

Add a library reference

It may still be hard for you to find a digital text version of your document. You can ask for help from your library or your accessibility services before the start of the term to ensure that participants who need these formats do not fall behind.

You can also add a library reference to Ally to help the participants.

  1. Select No when asked if you can get a text-based version
  2. Select Yes when asked if the document is in the library
  3. Fill in as much information as you can into Ally's feedback form and then select Add Reference.

When you have added your library reference, participants can receive the document information by going to the file and selecting Alternative formats in the menu next to the file name. Click on Library reference.

 

Alternative OCR formats

If you answer No to both the questions on the text based version and the physical document in the library in Ally's feedback, Ally will perform an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to try identify text elements in the document. Unfortunately this is not a definitive solution, so it will not improve the result. You should still replace the scanned version when it is possible.