KESI Format Automater

You have a big text book or a large exam or a bunch of documents you need to turn into Kurzweil files.  A lot of even advanced Kurzweil 3000 users or support staff don’t realize there is a great tool that automates a big part of this job, saving hours of watching over a  computer – the Automater.

The Automater has been shipped as an optional install for years.  But if you don’t have your Kurzweil 3000 install DVD, you can also download the app here: https://www.kurzweiledu.com/downloads/K3Automater.zip

You use the Automater with the output of a high speed scanner or the e-file of a textbook that you might get from a publishing company.  In either case, the Automater takes a big multipage pdf or a folder with many TIFF files (a common output format for scanners), OCR’s that file(s), even breaks it down into manageable chapter based files, and dumps it in a folder of your choice.

Point the Automater to a folder with an e-version of a thousand page text book, start it, come back in a few hours to a multi chapter KESI formatted version of the same book.

Kurzweil Educational Systems has an article with a step by step guide on how to use the Automater to turn that bundle of TIFF’s or pdf’s or multi-page pdf into KESI documents.  Including an easy to follow how-to video.  READ THE POST HERE

Are You Sure You Don’t Have a High Speed Scanner?

Don’t think you have a high-speed scanner?  90% of standard office photocopiers are also automated, high speed scanners. 

If the copier in your school or accessibility/disability support office can handle double sided documents, and stands on the floor, it’s probably got an automated scanning function. You feed in a stack of documents, and your copier outputs either a series of TIFF image files, or a big pdf usually to a network drive, USB drive or even an email address – depends how it’s been set-up.

So even if you don’t have a high speed scanner of your own, or the office that has the scanner doesn’t have Kurzweil on their computer you can still make use of the KESI Automater. 

1. Use the photocopier/scanner at your workplace, college, university or school to do the scanning
2. Transport or send the files (Google Drive or Dropbox might be an option for bigger files) to your computer
3. Then run the Automater on your machine