Creating forms optimized for handprint recognition
Handprint recognition applications can provide dramatically different results in terms of accuracy depending on whether the form is designed with intelligent character recognition (ICR) in mind.
Forms Processing applications like ABBYY FlexiCapture have a built-in form design tool with ICR-optimized field layout elements and rules that validate whether your form uses best practices for recognition. These forms can be automatically converted to recognition templates for scanning for data capture. This saves you dozens of hours of trial and error during the design process and even more in data entry once the filled in forms are collected.
Best practice recommendations for ICR and OCR forms include:
- Plenty of space between form elements and labels, at least 0.5cm / 0.25in
- Use drop out colors for form backgrounds when possible
- Hand printed characters should be constrained with boxes or combs to force filler to write legible, separated, printed characters
- Use check boxes instead of handprint when possible since these are nearly 100% accurate
- Use numeric codes instead of alphanumeric text when possible to reduce the number of possible characters and increase accuracy
- Use validation rules to check against possible values and flag data with incorrect values
- Check box fields can be used to verify the presence of signatures
The primary purpose of Optical Character Recognition is to quickly and automatically scanned or photographed document images into machine readable text that can be searched for keywords or edited in a word processor.
Full Page OCR converts the entire document into one of the following formats:
Forms Processing Software uses ICR technology to automate data entry tasks involving hand-filled surveys, applications and forms. It provides interfaces for scanning, recognition, data verification and export, as well as management and monitoring tools to track large volumes of documents and data through the workflow.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition and is the technology that allows software to interpret text on scanned images. When this technology is applied to automating business data entry processes it’s referred to as OCR Data Capture.
Any organization that collects data from paper documents, or electronic files like PDF and Office documents, can get a very high return on investment by automating the data entry with OCR data capture software.
