Using Windows 10 OCR feature with NVDA

In the 2017.3 update, NVDA has supported for Windows 10 OCR. For people who wonder what is OCR, Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology that enables you to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into editable and searchable data. More information can be found at http://bit.ly/2ie7e6l

First, you must update to NVDA 2017.3, then do the following steps:

Select recognition language

• Open NVDA menu.

• Go to Preferences ->Windows 10 OCR, and press Enter.

• A dialog displays. At the Recognition language combo box, use arrow keys to select the language you want to recognize, and press Enter to save and close the dialog.

• now, move focus to an object you want to recognize, such as a PDF as image formatted, or image of any text such as a newspaper taken by a camera.

• Press NVDA+R, and wait for the program to process.

After recognition complete, you can use arrow keys to navigate and read, as well as select and copy the text if you'd like.

Additional information

• If the language you want to be recognized is not list in the Language combo box, go to setting -> time & language -> Region & language, then press the Add language button, and find your language.

• Not all languages have supported for OCR. There are about 25 languages, but I didn't find any information about the specific languages are currently supported.

• People who use NVDA OCR add-on must disable, or remove it before using Windows 10 OCR.