The SensusAccess website includes a series of useful resources to help you get the most out of SensusAccess.
Having documents in an accessible file format ensures that SensusAccess can take in information in the way which works best. It might be necessary to convert a file in order to use it with assistive technology or to access the information in a different way eg. text to mp3.
rIt is important to understand that SensusAccess does not guarantee that the contents of a document are accessible.
- Ensure that your source document contents are accessible - Microsoft Office 365 programmes such as Word have a built-in accessibility checker.
- Use good quality images – When converting pictures or scanned PDFs to text, for optimum accuracy use the clearest photo possible – no smudges, no shadows. Make sure the text in the photo is straight.
- Be careful with PDFs – If you have a scan of a book in PDF form, or a PDF where the text cannot be recognised (not OCR-readable) you may get better results by converting to an image file eg. .tif, and then to a PDF.
- Use an Equation Editor – SensusAccess can read mathematical symbols, but they must be written using an equation editor such as the editor in Word, or MathType.
- Provide the correct metadata – When converting text files, check that the language of the document is set, that headers and titles are marked, and that the file properties have the correct author set. This is very important when converting to e-book file types.
