A scanned PDF holds pictures of pages. There may be no text in it at all, so a screen reader finds nothing to read. ELLA tells you when a document is a scan.

What ELLA does

ELLA reads the text in the pictures using optical character recognition, usually called OCR. It can then give you a separate Word file or PDF with real text, and use that text for braille or large print.

Get a better result

Improve a scan

Scan at 300 dots per inch or higher.
Scan in black and white or greyscale for text pages. Use colour only when colour matters.
Put the page flat and straight on the glass. A tilted page is harder to read.
Scan every page the same way up.
Check the scan on screen before you upload it. The text should be crisp.

If you can get the original file instead, upload that. It will always be better than a scan.

What goes wrong

Small, faint or crumpled print is read with mistakes.
Columns, tables and footnotes can come out in the wrong order.
Maths, chemistry and unusual symbols are the places where OCR fails most.
Handwriting is much harder. ELLA's handwriting reading is experimental and less reliable than reading printed text.

Check the text

The terms of service name text read from scans, photos or handwriting as a place to take special care. Compare the result with the scan, especially numbers, names and dates. The reply tells you what ELLA is less sure of.

If nothing comes out

The file may be blank, too faint or too large. See file too big and job failed or withheld.

Photos work the same way. See photos of pages. For PDFs that do have text but no structure, see untagged PDFs.

Still stuck?

Browse the help centre, or contact support and say what you were trying to do.

Scanned PDFs