(Mods - It's not travel related, but I'm not sure if it will get answers in Omni. (If this belongs there instead of here then feel free to move it there.)

I am trying to solve an accessibility problem for my friend who has disabilities. She uses an iPad2 mounted on her power chair. The iPad 2 enables her to do many things she could not do before. We're wondering if there was a way to solve this problem:

She has volunteered to help a local disabilities organization fill in forms for whatever it is they do. She goes in once a week and types in info on a PC using MS Word. I help this organization with their computers on occasion. When I was there yesterday, they asked me if it were possible to fill in the Word Docs on her iPad, which is easier for her to use than a regular keyboard on the regular PC. I tried opening the doc in the Pages App but the formatting was totally screwed up. I was able to fix it on Pages App on my Mac Book Pro, but when trying to open it on the iPad, the formatting was still messed up. I couldn't fix it on the iPad like I could on the Mac. I didn't go further than that when I realized that even if we did succeed, this organization does not have Apple Macs, or iPads to open her work and convert it back to doc files (necessary as that is the format others that they work with use). I did try reconverting it back to a doc file from Pages, but it doesn't come out right either.

I think it is not possible to do what she wants, but I thought I would ask our resident iPad gurus if they had a way it could be done. Is there an App for that? We did think of PDF files, but I didn't have time to try it out. Could it be done that way? I know it can be done on a MacBook that has Office 2011, because I did it yesterday, but she needs to be able to do it on her iPad. (using a regular keyboard is very hard for her). Any suggestions on how to do this using an iPad, or is it not possible? If not possible then she'll just have to keep using their PC.

you could try quickoffice pro and see if that works on the ipad. I find it works much better with custom formatting of MSFT office documents. If it doesn't work, the apple store will refund your money.

What about the formatting on the document is screwed up with pages?

We could give that app a try. Thanks! ^

The Word doc is a form with lots of boxes and lines to be filled out. When we try it in Pages on the iPad the words in the boxes have the letters all going down, with no left to right. I guess like this:

N
a
m
e
?

It does that in every box on the form. There's way too many to fix it. What's strange is that using Pages on my MacBook Pro it comes out fine. I have to reduce the zoom level (I think that was the setting) a bit to get the right side of the form to show up. It makes the form slightly smaller, but acceptable to use. However, when we save it on the MacBook and transfer it to the iPad, we get the same results with the text. I can't figure out how to fix it.