[Athen] [EXTERNAL] - Review a document?

[Hayman, Douglass via athen-list]

My bad on looking at the PDFs rather than the epubs earlier.

A colleague recommended Thorium reader (free) and I was able to open the last to of those downloads, open each in Thorium and used the controls in NVDA to start and stop the TTS playback for them just fine.

Doug Hayman
IT Accessibility Coordinator
Information Technology
Olympic College
dhayman at olympic.edu<mailto:dhayman at olympic.edu>
(360) 475-7632



From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Hayman, Douglass via athen-list
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2025 12:29 PM
To: Wallace, Sagan <Sagan.Wallace at oregonstate.edu>; Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] [EXTERNAL] - Review a document?

CAUTION: This email came from a non-OC system or external source. Beware of phishing and social engineering!

The last one, scan of a typewritten document is untagged and not able to be accessed with NVDA using Acrobat Reader.  Obviously not remediated in the accessibility sense of the word.

Did that get jobbed out to someone and that is what you got back?

Doug Hayman
IT Accessibility Coordinator
Information Technology
Olympic College
dhayman at olympic.edu<mailto:dhayman at olympic.edu>
(360) 475-7632



From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Wallace, Sagan via athen-list
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2025 11:38 AM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] - [Athen] Review a document?

CAUTION: This email came from a non-OC system or external source. Beware of phishing and social engineering!

Hello all,

This is a big ask, so I'm sending this out to a few lists. Would anyone who is an experienced screen reader be willing to review one of the documents linked below, and give feedback on how effectively they were remediated? If you were a visually-impaired researcher using our archives and downloaded this material, would you be satisfied? Frustrated?

Background: I am working on remediating our library archives for screen reader accessibility. These are theses and dissertations, most of which are STEM-heavy. All of our documents are PDF scans and we are converting them to HTML or EPUB. I am finding it's hard to make some remediation decisions because we are remediating to have these available for any researcher who encounters them, rather than being able to tailor them to an individual reader's needs. I'm confident in our ability to do a basic correction, but I want these documents to be actually pleasant for our future reader to use. Hopefully I'll be able to conduct an actual UX test with our patrons, but until then I'd love some general feedback.

Each folder has the original PDF, and our output file:


  *   Example of a math-heavy PDF converted to HTML<https://oregonstate.box.com/s/ys5o4xtdmwlwkkejej9rvwyi06he1h66>

     *   Math was made using the Word equation editor. I'm particularly curious how equation 104 on page 77 is, since that was made using MathPix.

  *   Document with lots of footnotes<https://oregonstate.box.com/s/67packz54fb96vnxwgp3h07lon1fdxck>, converted to EPUB

     *   In particular, how is the navigation back and forth between the end notes and the main text?

  *   PDF of a poetry book<https://oregonstate.box.com/s/6u0po6y3qmtcyc4co3zjtxobvq1cjgle>, converted to EPUB

     *   I haven't been able to figure out how to maintain the formatting and page breaks, but I don't think keeping it as PDF is the answer.

  *   Scan of a typewritten document from 1874<https://oregonstate.box.com/s/2uhr3tul3p9ibxnhz1xflsga6gqokzlm>, converted to EPUB

     *   In this one I'm trying to balance maintaining the original formatting, while making the difficult-to-read text audible. We have a lot of documents written in cursive that will need to be corrected.

Thank you for any support, and I hope you have a wonderful week!

Best,


Sagan Wallace
they/them
Library Accessibility Manager
Oregon State University Libraries & Press


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