

Although, it is important to note that just because the text is selectable it does necessarily mean your computer is accurately recognizing the text, only that it acknowledges the text is there. This means that the text in your document is at least being recognized. Notice in the image above that we are able to select text by clicking and dragging over it. If you can highlight specific text in the PDF document, that means that the text is at least being recognized by your computer. The simplest way to check if a PDF needs to have an OCR performed is to try to highlight text with your cursor. If you are already working with a high-quality PDF, then the first step is to check if an OCR is needed. Because of this, working with documents that are clear and of high quality is important. If the text on the page is blurry or blacked out, an OCR will not return accurate results. Many of the electronic versions of readings and articles that are passed out originate from low-quality scans.

The first step is to ensure that you are working with a good quality PDF and this can often be a challenge in a University setting.
PROGRAM TO HIGHLIGHT PDF FILES HOW TO
Optical character recognition with Adobe Acrobat Pro IX Step One: how to tell if a PDF needs to have an OCR performed However, there are steps that can be performed on these documents before they are distributed to students that can eliminate these potential problems. Often times, low-quality PDFs or PDFs that have not had an optical character recognition (OCR) performed on them will not function properly with these programs. Many students rely on screen readers and text-to-speech software to access their readings. But for some learners, simply having access to a digital version of a text may not be enough to ensure that the content is accessible. Providing digital texts is a great way to make some of your course content more accessible to different learners.

Working with articles in PDF format can be extremely useful.
