Thank you, U.S. Department of Education!

If you are eligible for alternate format text, I’ve got some very exciting news for you! The U.S. Department of Education has granted Bookshare.org a rather generous amount - $32 million, to be exact. Why is this important for you? Well, this grant allows all United States colleges and universities a free membership to Bookshare.org… and any student with a print disability now has access to free memberships through their college or university.

This means you can look for your own accessible format books, download them, and use them… all independently. Matter of fact, Bookshare even includes a free reader (Victor Reader Soft, which we have in several locations on campus) You never have to return these, and DSS’s only involvement is a once-a-year certification.
Ok, you know I have to say it… there’s advantages and there’s disadvantages to this little deal.

Advantages

• FREE BOOKS! As an obsessive reader myself with way more books than any human being should ever have to move from house to house…. I think this is huge. No membership cost, no software cost, no book cost… wow.
• Accessible books with great navigation tools. Bookshare.org’s books are in DAISY format, which works really well for people with visual impairments, learning disabilities, and mobility impairments. Find a specific page, find a specific phrase, read from front to back, jump around, bookmark, change the reading speed… anything.
• Hey, Braille readers - Bookshare.org has Braille-ready files (.brf)!
• Access to find books anywhere, anytime. No requests to DSS, no waiting period. Find it, download it, read it. That’s it.
• Newspapers and periodicals, too!
• Books for school, books for fun - all available to you. 35,000 of them and growing every day.
• Oh, and did I mention FREE BOOKS? And that you don’t have to purchase the book in order to download the accessible version? I think that means FREE BOOKS.

Disadvantages (relax, there’s not many of them)

• If you aren’t familiar with Victor Reader Soft, you will need to learn it. Not a huge deal, but there nonetheless.
• The biggest disadvantage is that Bookshare.org doesn’t have a huge textbook collection, so this won’t supply all of your textbooks. (Sorry, you’re still stuck with me. This at least gives you an option, though.)

Too blog-worthy to resist - Free reading service

Ever come across a website that you think - wow, this is really innovative? Well, this one crossed my email awhile ago. I ran across it again today, as I was cleaning out the inbox.

ReadThisToMe.org provides a FREE, on-demand reading service for people who are visually impaired. What makes this uniques is that, because it is staffed by humans instead of computers, the service makes available items that would otherwise be inaccessible. Examples include: handwritten notes, labels on cans, diagrams…the list goes on.

So how do you get this great service? Easy! Fax your document to ReadThisToMe.org, and they call you back at the number you list and read it to you.

No fax machine, you say? If you have an internet connection and a scanner, you have a fax! Windows and Mac both have ingenious little applications that make this work.

And yes, the service is free. They do, however, accept donations.

What's New for '07-'08?

New Academic Year’s Resolutions

Everyone else makes New Year’s Resolutions, and never being one to follow a convention just because it exists, I’ve decided to make some New Academic Year’s Resolutions.

• I resolve to blog more often. (The nice thing about saying “more often” is that it’s nebulous and y’all can’t pin me down to specific timeframes.)
• I resolve - again - to look for more resources for math and science.
• I resolve to create more online training materials. I’m thinking about a Blackboard class for technology and disability.
  

New Stuff at SOU This Fall

This summer, once again, we’ve been busy re-imagining the student experience with SOU. And the results?

• JAWS went to a network version! Now, if you are a JAWS user, you can use it just about anywhere on campus. Not on Macs, obviously…
• Dragon is in the process of being updated. The adaptive stations in the library and main lab have the new version (9), and the AT Lab is next.
• Priority Registration is now available to eligible students online. No more picking up pieces of paper in the Access Center, heading over and standing in line… only to find out you need instructor approval for a class. Why is this in the AT blog? What better demonstration of how technology assists us than to use an online service to do something quickly and independently, and in our pajamas if we want to?!
• You can now access the request form for an accommodated test online. We’re working on some other very exciting changes in the testing process… keep watching for this!
• The new DSS Student Handbook is available for download from our website. This handy book includes procedures, form samples, resources, your rights and responsibilities… just about everything you could want to know. You can use any of your favorite assistive technology to access the handbook.
• We now have a Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Coordinator, Ila Sachs. She and I work together on FM Systems, VRS, TTYs, and other hearing-related technology.

More improvements are coming. If you have ideas that you would really like to see implemented, tell us in the comment field!

'06-'07 Almost in the Bag!

Almost the end of the traditional academic year, here, with only dead week and finals week to go! It’s a good time to think about what we’ve accomplished this year - or at least what stands out to me at the moment….

Technology - hardware you can kick and software you want to throw

• Began limited production of DAISY format alternate texts
• Produced an astounding 193 alternate format texts, up 169% over last year.
• Hired an awesome AT Lab Guy and two incredible Alt-Text Production Genies! Kevin, Abby, and Mike, thanks for a fantastic year - y’all are the only reason I still have any sanity left. They have made it possible for me to be in two (and sometimes three!) places at the same time, and they’ve been a hoot to work with to boot!
• Stablized platform of AT offered on campus; everything is working the way it’s supposed to. This is a huge improvement.
• Trial run of software loan using Scientific Notebook
• Installed TI-84 emulator software in accommodated testing rooms; worked well for students with low vision
• Researched new innovation after new innovation… you’ll have to wait for the next blog to see what we’re up to next year.
• Installed TTYs and public-access videophone. Huge thanks to Sprint for their donation of said videophone.
• Began actual production of Braille on campus and made Braille embosser available in AT lab for student use

Web Options for Everyone

I must admit, I’m a bit of a web-addict. I love the fact that I have instant access to just about whatever information I might want, at whatever time I want to get to it. 2 in the morning and can’t sleep? Browse eMusic for new tunes - perhaps a little Mozart will help. Looking for a one-handed keyboard? Abledata has plenty. Want to re-read Pride and Prejudice for the 47th time, or finally get through all of War and Peace? A quick download from Project Gutenberg.

There are some exciting new ways to get in and around the Web if you have a disability. There are many fine, full-featured products that work beautifully for Web browsing, such as JAWS or Kurzweil. This article will focus on free resources, however. Let’s face it - students have no money!

Firefox Browser

One of the things I really love about Firefox is the ability to customize exactly what you want it to do; a fantastic lesson in the value of open-source programming. To make it even more fun, FireFox Add-Ins work on both Windows and Mac platforms; everyone is invited to play!Themes such as the HiVisGnome Big give you high contrast, large icons and fonts to make browsing easier.

The real excitement comes with Extensions. Think of these as new tools to add to the menus or toolbar - stuff the original developer didn’t think to add. Here’s a few that work around accessibility issues:

• Accessibility Toolbar from the Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility. Use it for quick access to a high-contrast stylesheet or to pull out lists of frames, headers or links for fast navigation. Web developers take note - there are tools here to make designing accessible pages much, much easier. Has both toolbar icons and menu options, making keyboard accessibility to the features quick and easy.
• Accessibar has very simple, visible toolbar options to control page view. Want a different background color? Two clicks. Increase font size with one click, and one more to increase space between the lines (a huge help for visual processing learning disabilities). There’s even a free text-to-speech reader built in, so you can have it read the content of the page to you.
• FireVox is a screenreader extension for FireFox. Because it works with the live page, it reads dynamic content reasonably well. The highlighting feature is helpful for users with low vision or dyslexia.

Internet Explorer

• Explorer has some customization options that make it more workable for users with disabilities. These include custom style sheets and toolbar customizations. Customizations are available in both the Windows and Mac versions, although they vary a little between platforms.

New Function in an Already Fabulous Suite

Summary Tool

Ever wanted to skim an electronic document, without having to page through it? Now you can. Using the Premier Assistive Technology tools available on campus (Etext Reader, Universal Reader, Talking Word Processor), you can create a summary of the document with just two clicks. You can choose a percentage (default is 10%) of the document, or a specified number of sentences, and the program will extract a summary for you.

Benefits

• Finally, a way for people with visual impairments to skim a document!
• Get an idea of the content and style of the document before reading - a great preview or review method for studying.
• Use with the Talking Word Processor to summarize your own work; a good check to see if your structure is making logical sense.

Downsides

• Quality of summary varies greatly by author’s style and structure. This is, after all, and automatically generated summary, not one directed by human intelligence.
• Encourages the temptation to skim required reading only - not really read it. Use this as a study tool, not a substitute for real reading!!!

If you have questions about this or other assistive technology tools, use the comment field!

Great New Text to Speech for Mac!

Mac users, rejoice! If you’ve ever had the hankering to create your own audiobooks, you can now do it quickly and inexpensively, with some of the best synthetic voices around.

Enter TextParrot, the new text to speech application from AssistiveWare. Not only will it read most electronic documents aloud, with one click it exports your document as an audio track in iTunes. Quickly, too - I processed a 30 page chapter of a textbook in less than 4 minutes. The available voices (3 to choose from in the basic version) from Acapela Group are quite clear and understandable. Even better, it’s affordable! At only $39.95 for a single-language, single-user license, it’s a deal you almost can’t afford to miss. To be truly amazed, check out the prices on the household pack or the multiple languages.

If you read slowly, learn auditorily, prefer to use more than one sense while you read, or have visual or visual processing disabilities, this is definitely a piece of software to check out.