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One of the reasons Calibri was selected over Times New Roman was it has a lower rate of OCR transcription errors, making documents using it easier for people us
by papercrane 10mo ago
One of the reasons Calibri was selected over Times New Roman was it has a lower rate of OCR transcription errors, making documents using it easier for people using screen readers.
- blueflow 10mo agoLink on that, as OCR should be more reliable with Times New Roman due to significant serifs.
- papercrane 10mo agoThe memo at the time said the serifs can cause OCR issues. https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232 https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232
- opo 10mo agoJust because they claimed it, doesn't make it true. OCR and screen reader software in 2023 did not have problems with serifs.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- orwin 10mo agoI don't have link on that, but the main difficulty with OCR isn't the OCR part (not anymore at least), it's the "clean up" part, and serifs are a pain in the ass, especially on sightly crumpled paper. My use case was an ERP plugin that digitalized and read to receipt to autofill reimbursement demands, and since most receipt use sans-serif fonts, it was mostly fine, but some jokers use serifed font (mostly on receipts you get when using cash, not credit card receipts) and the error rate jumped from like 1% to 13% (not sure about the 1%, it might be a story i told myself to make me feel better, it was a decade ago, before i pivoted to network from AI. I always take the best decision it seems)
- nerevarthelame 10mo agoI don't know what studies Blinken's State Department considered, but here are 2 studies on the matter. https://www.academia.edu/72263493/Effect_of_Typeface_Design_Features_on_Legibility_and_OCR https://www.academia.edu/72263493/Effect_of_Typeface_Design_...: "For Latin, it was observed that individual letters with serif cause misclassification on (b,h), (u,n), (o,n), (o,u)." https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10220037 https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10220037: [Figure 5 shows higher accuracy for the two sans-serif fonts, Arial and DejaVu compared to Times New Roman, across all OCR engines]
- carlosjobim 10mo agoThat doesn't make much sense, since a typewriter will neither type Calibri nor Times New Roman. And OCR should only be needed for type written documents, because any document made with Calibri or TNR is already digital.
- contact9879 10mo agoprinted documents, images, horribly inaccessible pdfs, horribly inaccessible websites
- carlosjobim 10mo ago> Printed documents - Use the original, which is digital. > Images - Use the original, which is digital. > horribly inaccessible pdfs - Use the original, which has real text in the PDF > horribly inaccessible websites - All text on any web site is digital. Nobody uses OCR on a website. A massive paper producer like the government shouldn't adopt their type setting to people who are using technology wrongly.
- contact9879 10mo agoan example from today (pdf warning): https://www.ntsb.gov/news/Documents/National%20Defense%20Authorization%20Act.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/news/Documents/National%20Defense%20Aut...
- carlosjobim 10mo agoGod damn... Why didn't they fax it back and forth a few times as well, just for good measure?
- contact9879 10mo agoit's easier to mandate font than to excise all processes within the fed bureaucracy that result in these. images being digital have no bearing on OCR ability