PDFs Are A PAIN for the Vision-Impaired
Resources I used to resolve the problem
I’ve hated navigating PDFs since they first came out. You can zoom in to make the font more prominent, but there’s no word-wrap. Reading them this way is far more trouble than it’s worth. When I heard about tools that summarize PDFs, I started wondering what other things AI could do to PDFs.
Not only do I want to read them, I want to quote them. If the summary looked good, I wanted to be able to find parts of it to quote in my articles. I also wanted to be able to listen to them while doing chores. A few months ago, I discovered that Google Play allowed me to listen to DRM-free epubs that I’d stored on my drive. I didn’t care about the robotic voice. Like Kindle, it also allows me to highlight and add notes. It’s even possible to export these notes to use them in outlines.
The devices I have include:
- A Windows11 laptop
- An Android tablet
- An iPad
- An old Android Motorola phone I use as a listening device
- An old iPhone6 and iPod touch I also use as a listening device
Discovering that I could convert PDFs into epubs was like discovering a locked treasure chest in my backyard, for which I just found the key. I…
