Unexpected Things

As I sit here in the airport, I’m thinking about all those times when things don’t go as we expect. For example, I awoke at 3:45 this morning, expecting to leave from the Medford airport at 5:50 and arrive in Denver for the Accessing Higher Ground conference at 2:37 this afternoon. Instead, here I am in Eugene at 2:45, hoping that this flight will go as planned and I will indeed end up in Denver at 9 ish this evening.

When things don’t go as expected, do you have a way to handle it? What about when your technology doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, or if it fails? Do you know what to do if you get a virus? Having a backup plan is always a good idea. Here’s my top 3 recommendations to prepare for those times when things don’t go as expected…

1. Backup, backup, backup! If you are storing all your documents on your network F: drive, then this is happening for you automatically. But what about at home? Do you have old files backed up somewhere? Or are they all just sitting on your hard drive, waiting for a virus? There are a number of good backup programs out there. Get yourself some rewritable CDs and make backup copies of your documents. Assistive technology users should also make backups of their program preferences - face it, do you really want to have to train Dragon again or go through all those settings on JAWS again? Save preference files and keep a copy with your application CDs.
2. Know where you put your application CDs, and keep any licence key numbers with them. Keeping all these things in one spot will make locating them easier should something go wrong and you need to re-install the application. If you downloaded a program from the internet rather than receiving a CD for it, it’s an excellent idea to make a backup copy of the installation software on a CD.
3. Keep technical support contact information somewhere that you can find it. It’s really irritating to know that the support contact info you need is on the internet somewhere, but you can’t get to it because your computer won’t get to the internet.

If You Want New Tools...

If you think that this blog has had an unreasonable focus on alternate format texts, there is a reason. The number of alternate text requests for this fall has been just unbelievable, and so my mind has been very much upon the world of creating audio, etext, and Braille versions of textbooks and other readings. So far, we’ve had over 60 requests for individual texts. Compare that to last fall’s 27, and you begin to see why I’m a bit consumed! (And thus why blogging has taken a bit of a back seat in the last few weeks.)

So the academic year is underway. Indeed, we’re almost facing midterms already! (Don’t you just love the quarter system and how fast it moves?!) Wondering what tools SOU might have to help you through the year? Wonder no more. We have a series of trainings that explains the many software and hardware adaptations we have available on campus. For more information about the tools we have, check out the AT Home page. For information about the training series, check out our Learning Opportunities page.
If you missed one that you really wanted information about, keep checking - we will be running this series again.

Braille Has Arrived!

Hooray! For the first time ever, we have Braille production capabilities on the SOU campus!

This summer, we purchased an Index Basic-D Braille embosser. As printers go, it’s really a beautifully engineered piece of equipment; quite sleek and impressive. Once we added Duxbury 10.6, an astoundingly quick text-to-Braille translator, we were off and running!

Literally, actually, as I quite amused the rest of the office by dancing around with the syllabus I’d produced, chanting, “I maa-ade Braille. I maa-ade Braille.” Truly, this is a big step forward for SOU, as previously we had to send all of our Braille needs elsewhere to produce.

Not only can we produce Braille documents, but we can also create certain types of tactile graphics. At this time, we’re limited to fairly simple picture graphics, but can do some pretty nifty graphs and charts. If you’re interested, drop me a line!

SayIt Review & Alternate Text Options (part 2)

I downloaded the trial version of SayIt and played with it quite a bit. What follows is my personal review - your experience may vary!

On the plus side, it does read text aloud, it is very inexpensive, and it’s one of very, very few Palm text-to-speech applications. For those who are looking for an equivalent experience to even inexpensive text-to-speech applications (such as Natural Reader, Universal Reader, or Apple’s VoiceOver), you are bound to be disappointed. Essentially, SayIt copies text to a Memo-like application, then reads it aloud. You cannot specifically select which text (say, a paragraph from a four-page document) to copy - it will copy all of the available text in the open document. There were no navigation tools to start or end a specific point or repeat a section without repeating the entire document from the beginning. The voice is clunky and slow, with no ability to change speed or pitch. For most assistive technology users, this product probably won’t fit your needs. The good news is that at least it’s out there! Perhaps future versions will contain the features we need to make SayIt a viable option for AT users.

As promised in the Spotlight on Alternate-Format Text, let’s take a look at the options that SOU’s alternate-format text users have for receiving their texts. In the earlier blog, we looked at the many format choices alt text users have: electronic text accessed through a variety of programs, MP3s. Again, all of these have advantages and disadvantages. In addition to these choices, the way the alt text gets to you can also take many forms.

• The most popular output choice tends to be CDs. They are easily portable and not so small that they get lost in the bottom of a backpack too often. With electronic text, we can put each book on a separate CD, or we can often put several together on one CD. MP3s usually take several CDs per book, depending on the speed of the reading voice. CDs do need to be returned to DSS by the last day of the quarter in which they are checked out.
• We can set up a way for you to download your book files over the internet through an ftp site called YouSendIt. This is a free site. When files are ready, we compress them in a .zip file and upload them to YouSendIt. YouSendIt then sends the student an email, saying the files are ready for download and giving them a specific address to go to to do so. For students with a fast internet connection, this can be a quick and easy way to get your alt text, with no CDs to return. (Students will instead be responsible for deleting these files from computers or any storage devices at the end of the quarter.)
• Students can bring in a flash drive (also called jump drives, USB drives, or memory sticks) and we can download alt text directly to these. Flash drives are incredibly portable and have recently become very cost-effective ways of transporting fairly large amounts of data.
• We can download MP3 files directly to a student’s iPod or other MP3 player. Some MP3 players also have speed controls for audiobooks - thus handling one of the downsides to receiving books in MP3 format.
• Some alt text books can be sent by email as well. Generally, these are shorter, no-graphics type books that we can compress in .zip format and still fit in an email. Email is not recommended for students who are using a dialup connection, as files can be large enough to cause long download times. We email only to students.sou.edu addresses and will not use other, personal email accounts. Please note that if you are forwarding your SOU email to another account, the size restrictions that account has may limit your ability to receive alt text files in this way.

Text to Speech for the Palm?

I admit it - I’m addicted to my handheld computer. Currently, I have a fairly basic Palm Zire31

that I bought when my beloved Treo 90 bit the dust. (I seem to have a penchant for buying handhelds right before they are discontinued.) One of the things I love most about handhelds is the enormous number of applications you can find, with many of them being free or very inexpensive.

Tonight I was roaming the web and got a wild hare to see if any text-to-speech programs were available for the Palm. Lo and behold, they exist! I haven’t tried any of these yet, so if someone else has, I’d love to see comments.

SpeakMemo will read aloud any text in the Memo application. Depending how much text you put into a memo, this could be helpful for users with dyslexia or other visual processing disabilities.

More exciting is the SayIt application. It claims to be “the only global TTS application for the PalmOS that works with most applications with edit text capabilities.” It’s very reasonably priced, so I may just download this and see what it can do.

Spotlight on Alternate-Format Text

It’s the end of August, and our alternate text request list is really moving! We have over 30 texts that have been requested for fall term so far. With four weeks to go before the term starts, I expect to see quite a few more in the near future. It’s a diverse list, ranging from Introduction to Statistics to children’s literature. Because the conversion process often requires me to skim the text as I go, I have the opportunity to learn many different things. Never dull!

If you gave alternate text a try in the past and were dissatisfied with it, you may want to consider giving it another go. Many, many things have changed, both within SOU’s processes and in the alternate text field in general. For instance, the American Association of Publishers is now cooperating with AHEAD (the national organization for disability services professionals) in creating a much more workable system for securing accessible text for students with disabilities. On another front, Readings for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D) is now offering all their titles exclusively on CDs - no more clunky, bulky, hard-to-navigate 4-track tapes! There are newer organizations, as well, that give you other sources for audio texts, such as Bookshare.

Here at SOU, we’ve made enormous changes in the past year. We now have the ability to produce e-texts, which can be accessed in a number of different ways:

• Using part of our newest assistive technology package, E-Text Reader, which is available on every computer on campus.
• Using JAWS or Kurzweil, available in our AT lab and at select adaptive stations on campus
• Using the program Natural Reader, which has both a free and paid version and can be downloaded at home
• Using VoiceOver, a built-in function of the Mac 10.4 (Tiger) operating system

All of these options have different advantages and disadvantages. If you’re interested, email me for more specifics or come in for a visit!

Another option is for us to convert text to an MP3. The enormous advantage of MP3s are their portability - you can use them directly off your computer or on any of the growing number of devices that support the MP3 format. There’s a couple of disadvanges, however. MP3 files are not searchable, which makes finding the sections you need to study, review, or refer to quite difficult. This past year, MP3s we produced were sectioned off by chapters to help with this issue. However, I can also create them for each separate page, which may help even more. The other disadvantage of MP3s is that once they are created, it is difficult to impossible to change speed or pitch. This does depend somewhat upon the device you are using - the popular iPod, for example, has three speeds (Slower, Normal, and Faster).

Coming soon - Info on new ways to receive your alternate texts!

Welcome to the AT @ SOU Blog!

Welcome to the first post of the AT @ SOU blog! Expect updates weekly-ish once a month, depending on what’s going on and what’s new.

I’m hoping to use this blog to discuss aspects of assistive/adaptive technology in general and at Southern Oregon University in particular. We’ve got a lot of great stuff here!

In other new things, DSS just received 20 AlphaSmarts to add to our inventory. These great little word processors are light (only 2 pounds), quick, run about 700 hours on just 3AA batteries, and are extremely durable. I once had a rather large 8th grader deliberately sit on one, and it still worked fine! Some students have used these to take notes in class - great for when manipulating a pencil is difficult.
We are now offering the free use of AlphaSmarts to our volunteer notetakers! Notetakers can check out an AlphaSmart for - surprise - taking notes in class. They can then quickly and easily transmit those notes electronically. No more coming in to the ACCESS Center to use the photocopier. Students receiving the notes benefit too, as they won’t need to physically come in to retrieve their notes.