One of the challenges for blind workers has been making paper forms accessible.
Here is a product review that sheds light on current technology
in this area.

Jamal

----------
Published in the December 1997 issue of the Monitor, the monthly
magazine of the Capital PC User Group, Inc.

                       Norton Omniform 2.0

                      reviewed by Lou Miller

OmniForm 2.0 by Caere Corporation is an excellent Windows 95/NT
program that will convert your paper forms to electronic forms.
We tested the program by converting a 9-page insurance
questionnaire into an OmniForm document. This questionnaire
contained hundreds of data elements and could easily have taken
weeks of effort to build using other tools. Our Management
Information Services department, which prefers COBOL and
text-based terminals, begged off the job, claiming the resources
required to convert the form were not worth the benefits we would
reap. We saw an opportunity to prove the tools available on the
PC platform could be effective and efficient.

Building the form

You don't just wake up in the morning and say, "Today I am going
to take this paper form and put it into my computer," even if you
are using PC-based technology. It's not that simple, but there
are certain well-defined steps to follow to accomplish this task:

1  Scan the form. Place the paper form in a scanner and use
scanner software to create an electronic copy.

2.  Clean up the form. The scanner image is never perfect. You
must correct it.

3.  Work on the data elements. Build and define fields; tie the
form to an underlying database engine.

Step 1:Scan the form

OmniForm software drives scanners, interprets the scanned image,
and converts it into editable text and data fields. OmniForm uses
optical character recognition (OCR), the world's best according
to Caere, and Caere's "Logical Form Recognition" technology to
accomplish these tasks. If you have never used this type of
software, you are in for a treat.

The scanner sends the computer a string of bits that represents
whether a particular spot on a page is colored or blank. OCR
technology takes this information and identifies the text and
graphic elements. When OCR technology is finished, you have a
page that can be edited as text rather than as a bit map.

The Logical Form Recognition technology takes this a step
further: It defines and creates data fields. It identifies
different types of form objects and fields automatically. It will
create tables and check boxes. It can even insert calculations
automatically.

When we were finished scanning the 9-page insurance form, we had
an OmniForm file complete with data fields. From start to finish,
this process took about 2 hours.

If you do not have a scanner, OmniForm can still work for you.
Fax the form to your fax software, save the form as a .TIFF or
.PCX file, and OmniForm will use that as a basis for the form.
OmniForm form edit tools also allow you to build a form from
scratch.

Step 2. Clean up the form

No scanning software is perfect. The number of errors generated
is dependent on the quality of the source. It took quite a long
time to clean up the 9-page insurance form, probably more than a
day, but the text on the original was small and the background of
the form was colored.

Error: Words are misspelled.

Misspellings occur from three causes. OmniForm could not
interpret the bit map data as a letter or other form object.
OmniForm will misinterpret a letter and place a wrong letter on
the form. Or the input was in error. All these errors must be
cleaned up. OmniForm provides a spellchecker to help with this
process.

Error: Data fields are created improperly.

When OmniForm sees a line, it usually assumes it is a data entry
field. The insurance form had subsections set off by lines. Each
time OmniForm created data entry fields for the title of the
subsection and the line above the subsection title. OmniForm will
also create date entry fields of the wrong type. For instance, it
can make a field that is a check box a regular text field.

OmniForm provides a good set of tools to work with data fields.
All data fields can be highlighted, listed, deleted, and added.
The remarkable feature of OmniForm is the astonishing accuracy of
its data field creation software, and not the few errors it
generated.

Error: Objects are not lined up.

Omniform provides tools for aligning objects. The alignment tools
are align left, right, top, bottom, center horizontally, and
center vertically. The sizes of objects can be made uniform by
selecting a group of similar objects and adjusting the size one
time for the group.

However, one tool is missing -- OmniForm cannot adjust the
horizontal or vertical spacing of objects. In figure 1 there are
many boxes. OmniForm has no tool to even out the spacing
automatically between the boxes in each vertical column. You must
adjust the spacing manually.

Step 3: Work on the data elements

When OmniForm finishes creating the form, it gives the data
elements generic names: Checkbox107, Table6, Filltext23. If your
only purpose is to be able to print the form, then there is no
requirement to change these names. However, if you intend to
store and retrieve the data entered with the form, then the
generic names should be changed to names that better reflect the
content of the fields.

This step was the most time consuming of all, and we decided to
finish the process only for the first two pages of the form.
These were the two pages the company had the most control over.
These two pages contained well over 100 data items.

OmniForm supports logical fields, comb fields (filters to force
the dashes in social security numbers or the parentheses in phone
numbers), and general purpose fields. Fields can be typed
(general, numerical, alphabetical, and so forth), read-only,
default filled, picked from a list, or kept within a certain
value range. A number of fields can be grouped so that only one
field may be selected. A help message can be created for each
field. OmniForm provides complete control over the form's tab
order.

You cannot make a field conditionally fillable. For example: If
you have designed a form that has the field "Play Sports Yes/No,"
you cannot have a second set of fields that specify the sport
(Baseball, Football, Tennis) conditional upon a true value being
entered in the first field.

Default values are inserted by creating a calculation that
returns the value to be entered. OmniForm supports basic
mathematical, text, time, date, and statistical functions as well
as an "if" statement.

The form is now finished and ready for use.

Using the form

The OmniForm product can be used in design mode or fill mode. As
soon as you are finished designing the form, you can hit the Fill
button and start entering data. OmniForm will automatically
create a database for the form and save the data you enter. Once
the data are entered, OmniForm provides tools to search and
select records from the database. OmniForm will export and import
data from ODBC-compliant databases. Omniform will also allow you
to share forms with other users and mail others copies of forms
and data. You can, of course, print the form, and it will look
like the original.

However, there are some real limitations. OmniForm will not allow
multiple users to use the same database simultaneously. OmniForm
lets you share a form, but when you do, you only see a copy of
the underlying database. You cannot save your changes back to the
original database.

Not all OmniForm users need own a copy of the full OmniForm
program. Caere also markets an OmniForm Filler program with no
design capabilities. It can only be used to view and fill forms.
The cost for OmniForm direct from Caere is $149, and the cost for
one filler license is $79. You can buy these products locally for
$159.99 and $91, respectively. Multiple license packs are also
available. The local price for a 10-license pack is $559.99, and
a 20-license pack is $901.99.

Other features

OmniForm supports object linking and embedding (OLE) automation
and other design tools not mentioned in this review.

Summary

We liked this product. It was easy to work with and did what it
said it would. It's very capable. Its major limitation is lack of
multiuser support.

We will continue to investigate OmniForm but will probably not be
using it for the insurance form. The Omniform version of the form
is ready to go but the current plan for the insurance form is to
collect the data across the Internet. OmniForm makes an Internet
product as well, but it needs a database connection. If we have
to write the database connection anyway, there is no need to use
OmniForm. We will input the data directly into the database
connection tool. The forms will no longer look like the insurance
company's forms, but we will be collecting the data in a
multiuser capable database.

Norton Omniform 2.0

-  Requirements: Windows 95 or NT 3.51, 8 Mbytes of RAM
   (12 Mbytes with Windows NT), 10-Mbyte hard disk

-  Source: Caere Corporation, 100 Cooper Court, Los Gatos, CA
   95030, (800) 223-7346, (408) 395-7000, fax (800) 437- 3299,
   http://www.caere.com/.

-  Price: $149.

Lou Miller is a system/financial analyst with a large local
corporation.
================================================================
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