Using Kurzweil to recognise a form

Most of us have at some point been faced with an imposing paper form - this is an unfortunate but still common scenario. Now, if you are in this situation and struggling to get the third party to understand exactly what an accessible electronic form is, there may be a tool that can help. (And I'm not talking about a hammer here…)

Launched in Version 11, the Form Recognition tool is a Scansoft engine recognition mode specifically aimed at enabling you to complete a paper form. This is in line with other conversion programs out in the wild, where you can take paper based material and create electronic forms (such as PDF) quickly. In K1000, the Scansoft recognition engine does all this hard work, detecting textboxes, checkboxes and so on then outputting something that you can work with relatively easily.

Okay, so how does it work? Let's run through the process:

1. Locate a paper based form and put it on your scanner.
2. Open the K1000, using the keystroke of Alt Control K or another method.
3. Make any adjustments you consider necessary for the quality of the form you have placed on the scanner. For example, change the DPI and brightness levels if this is considered necessary.
4. Access the Scan menu with Alt S and arrow down to the Scan as a Form option. Press the Enter key to begin scanning. (The K1000 will now start scanning the form as usual however it will be scanning in a different mode. What this means is that the recognition engine will switch to Scansoft (regardless of whether you have a different one chosen as your default) and also the image of the scan will be retained by the K1000 (again, this is regardless of your current settings.)
5. Eventually the recognised content of the form will be spoken and you will also hear a few beeps or chimes, indicating areas recognised as fields.
6. If you consider that the recognition is good enough then move on to the next step. However, if you feel that you need to tweak the settings and scan again then close the window (F4) and run through the scan operation after making the relevant changes.
7. With the form in place you can now attempt to complete the fields manually. To do this, launch the Fill a Field dialog box using the keystroke of Control F3. Alternatively, open the Edit menu and arrow up to the Fill a Field option.
8. The Fill a Field dialog box will launch so take a moment to Tab around and get a feel for the layout. Bear in mind that the layout of the dialog box is entirely dependent on the quality of the form recognition. For example, you may have edit fields that have no labels and so on.
9. Complete the fields in the dialog box as necessary and move to the button labelled Next. If this button is available then press Spacebar to move to the next screen of recognised form fields. However, if your form is a short one then there may not be several more pages of fields to complete. In this case, Tab to the OK button and press Spacebar. (At this point remember to save what you have done - make sure you save the work as a KES format file. The saved file will contain the recognised text, the scanned image of the form and of course the additional text you have input in the Fill a Field dialog box.)
10. If appropriate, you may now want to have a look at the actual scanned image of the form, this will contain all of the additional information provided in the Fill a Field dialog box. You can show this amended image by using the keystroke of Control W or by accessing the Show Image option in the Tools menu. You can even read through the fields and text in the form using the standard start and stop reading key: F5. When you have finished reading the information close the image down with Alt F4.
11. With the form complete, you can now print out the hard copy. Access the print option with Control P and choose your printer, in addition, Tab to the Use Images/Images Will Not Be Used For Printing control and set this to Yes. Press the Enter key to send the form to the printer and you are done!

Well, almost - what you may actually find is that cold hard reality bites a little bit harder here, meaning that the form recognition isn't quite right - maybe isn't even a little bit right... Or perhaps among twenty or so unlabelled fields, you've typed text into the wrong places. Ah well, we all love the K1000 don't we? I guess you might be wanting that hammer after all...