Is paper document scanning available through NVDA

[Julie Kline]

Greetings,
I am new to the NVDA screen reader, and this group. Does NVDA have a scan feature similar to the convenient OCR that Jaws has? I own a Windows 11 machine that has an Epson flatbed scanner. The scanner can be used to scan both regular and legal sized documents. If I have a paper document that I need to scan, is there something in NVDA that will let me scan the document, and then read out the results? I'm looking for something similar to what open book or a similar program used to do. If NVDA has this feature, or if there is an add-on I could try, I would appreciate any suggestions. If they don't, then is there any recommendation someone could give me for a scanning program that would work on the computer?
Thank you for any help.
Julie

[Gene Asner]

I won't go into the recognition abilities of NVDA and attachments in any
detail because I haven';t used them much. I will say that, in the
little playing around I've done recognizing things like pdf documents,
recognition may well not be as good as with programs that use for profit
recognition software like JAWS.

In other words, if you are unsatisfied with NVDA results, use a JAWS
demo for recognition of documents like pdf files. Forty minutes before
time out is more than enough time to recognize even most large documents
of hundreds of pages.

Gene

[Acer B-T]

Hi,

If i'm remembering right, you should be able to use Tesseract OCR to scan paper documents, though you would have to override compatibility for that add-on since it's not listed as compatible with the latest nvda version. I've done more ocring of pdfs and images than paper documents though, so I'm unsure of how well scanning an actual paper document would work.

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[Sean Randall]

I've gotten comparable OCR result's with the NAO addon for NVDA on email attachments and other files as I have with JAWS convenient OCR. This doesn't address the paper issue specifically but as a free tool, NAO has given me good enough results to avoid needing a system restart on many occasions. Thanks

Sean


On 5 Apr 2026, at 17:32, Gene Asner <gsa...@gmail.com> wrote:

I won't go into the recognition abilities of NVDA and attachments in any detail because I haven';t used them much. I will say that, in the little playing around I've done recognizing things like pdf documents, recognition may well not be as good as with programs that use for profit recognition software like JAWS.

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[FARHAN ISHRAK Fahim]

If nao and tesearact ocr does not satisfy you, try vission assistant addon.

[John O'Regan]

Hi Julie,

You can extract text from images using the Windows Snipping tool
(WinKey+Shift+S). Read this Microsoft support article for more info:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots-00246869-1843-655f-f220-97299b865f6b

Take a screenshot of the whole screen and select Text Actions to
extract the text. Paste the copied text into Notepad. Text may
require some prettifying. Procedure not recommended for large
documents.

HTH! :)

John

[Jason J.G. White]

Julie Kline <julie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I own a Windows 11 machine that has an Epson flatbed scanner. The
>scanner can be used to scan both regular and legal sized documents. If
>I have a paper document that I need to scan, is there something in NVDA
>that will let me scan the document, and then read out the results?

There is OCR software available that exists to scan and convert printed
documents and PDF files. Some such packages are available for free;
others are offered commercially.

When I last needed to handle paper documents in a Windows environment,
the tool of choice was ABBYY FineReader, which is a commercial package
for Windows and macOS. No doubt there are other options as well, and
people whose knowledge is more up to date than mine.

You would probably be better served by a scanning application than by
the OCR features of a screen reader, especially if your purpose is to
scan printed material rather than to convert images already on screen.

[blind...@gmail.com]

I don't know that it's available without an add-on

There are other that are better informed than I, however, I believe perousing the add-on store under tools in the NVDA menu might help.
Hth

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[Quentin Christensen]

As well as the add-ons previously mentioned in the thread, the other option is a full-fledged OCR program such as Abbyy FineReader or OmniPage.  I must admit I haven't used such a program for awhile.  Has anyone got experience with such a program they can share?

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