He flat states that the forms-processing vendors (who today claim that key entry is about to become obsolete) have no hope of delivering on that promise in the next few years.

Problem Is In The Algorithms

David Wood feels the problem is that the algorithms used in the industry cannot access much of the available information regarding the data -- information that is so easily used by humans reading forms that we don't even think about it.

Wood continues by saying that character recognition rates on black-and-white forms are almost always inferior to the accuracy possible with manual key entry.

Others Say Answer In Form Design

Leaving what David Wood says, others such as Joe Larson of Cardiff Software say the key to better automation using images and OCR/ICR techniques lies in the proper design of the input form -- a solution not available to most service organizations feeding data to computers.