Alternate format text... independently

This is another colleague-question inspired post. She was looking for resources that would help her relative (who has learning disabilities) through law school. I figured... hey, what a good opportunity for a blog post!

Text to speech programs

There are a number of text-to-speech programs out there that will, well, turn text into computerized speech. I've covered a number of these in some of my blog posts (tools for Mac users, another one for Mac, an older one for PC tools). Here's a more up-to-date list of my favorite text-to-speech tools and what the advantages and disadvantages are of each of them.

• Read Please: Free. Microsoft voices; customizable font & background color; copy/paste reading; reads email emoticons, adjustable voice speed. (There is also a not-free version that includes better voices and more options.)
• Advantages: Free! Easy to use. Several nice options.
• Disadvantages: Microsoft voices awful. Copy/paste method of reading is cumbersome to say the least.
• Natural Reader: Free. Can read Word, email, even accessible PDF files, Select text and press a key - not copy/paste; voice speed adjustable; change font sizing, zoom; uses Microsoft voices
• Advantages: Free! Can be used within Word or other applications
• Disadvantages: Microsoft voices awful. Have had reports from students about issues with crashing/locking up
• GhostReader (Mac): Inexpensive (trial free, full version $39.95). Great Cepstral voices; comes in multi-lingual formats; convert text to iTunes tracks easily, includes bookmark capability in exported iTunes tracks; reads accessible PDF files; has word-by-word tracking when reading on screen.

Creating text from physical books

"But..." (I hear you saying) "...I have actual books I have to read. How do I get them on my computer?" There are a couple of options: finding books that are already in an accessible format, or creating that format yourself. Here's how to convert physical books into documents you can use a text-to-speech program to read.

1. Scan the book. If you only need a few pages, a flatbed scanner will be fine. Otherwise, you'll want to cut off the binding (a copy shop usually as a guillotine that can do this for you) and then use an automatic document feeder on a scanner.
2. Use optical character recognition software (OCR) to convert the scan (pictures of pages) into actual text. Omnipage and Abbyy FineReader are the market leaders. I prefer Omnipage because it tends to recognize unknown images as text, where Abbyy tends to recognize unknown images as graphics. Omni also handles Greek symbols quite well. Abbyy is a bit easier to learn. Both are excellent products.
3. Open the .doc file you've created in step 2 and do a little clean-up. Remove optional hyphens (they'll mess up the reading) by doing a find-and-replace for ^- (replace with nothing). Ensure margins are consistent and reasonable throughout the document. Spell-check.
4. Read, using your favorite text-to-speech program above

Another option is to use Kurzweil to scan, convert, and read the text. It's not cheap ($395 for read-only, $1095 for black-and-white conversion version, $1495 for color conversion version), but Kurzweil is the Cadillac option. It's easy, it's smooth, it has all the bells and whistles for conversion, reading, and writing that you might need. There's versions for both Mac and PC, and a trial version is available.

Some serious words about copyright when creating alternate formats

Remember, folks, that this process is for your personal/educational use only. Don't distribute what you've created to anyone - that would be a violation of copyright law - and for for the love of Pete don't sell the alternate format. What we're talking about here is access... since traditional paper books (and many e-books, for that matter) are not accessible for people with certain disabilities, this process is designed to make them accessible so you can read the great stuff the author wrote. That's it.

Searching for already-available alternate format text

There are several places to get accessible formats of text. I've written pretty extensive blog posts already on Recordings for the Blind & Dyslexic and Bookshare.org, both of which have free memberships for students. They create beautifully accessible audio versions of texts of all kinds. For other sources of text that can be used with text-to-speech, you might also want to check out our Alt Format Resources webpage.

Tools I'm Using 2.0

Back in May and June of last year, I wrote a series of posts on the organization, writing, and research tools I'm using for my doctoral work. I've since winnowed that list down a bit and revised some of my processes. Since it's the time of the term when students are finishing up finals and perpetually looking ahead to next term to see what they can do better, this seemed like a good time to take you on the guided tour. As always, I'd love to hear other suggestions or provide clarification - shout that stuff out in the comments.

Organization

Only a couple of tools from the list have actually survived. I really loves me some plain 'ol pen-and-paper for todo lists and other random scrawlings. I still think Remember the Milk is an excellent tool; I just find the paper method so familiar and flexible that that's what I tend to stick to.

• Google Calendar is still my go-to. Everything, but everything, goes on there. (Ok, not work appointments, because Groupwise still doesn't talk to Google securely, but everything else.) Since I use Thunderbird for my school email, I've added the Lightning and Provider extensions so that I don't have to leave my email to schedule stuff. It's particularly helpful because Google Calendar allows sharing, so my significant other and I can see one another's calendars, as well as the ones for various community groups I work with.
  
• Evernote has become more and more my electronic brain. I keep webshots, emails, copies of documents, anything and everything I might need to refer to again. Because the tagging in Evernote is so flexible, I can search for things easily and quickly. Helpful when I'm digging for that-one-newspaper-article-about-that-one-thing-I-wanted-to-include-in-that-paper...

Writing

This one has changed enormously. It's a much shorter list now, as I've filtered down to just the tools that are most helpful to me and let the others go.

• MS Office for Mac is still the ubiquitous tool. I had just pulled together the templates I needed for APA format in Open Office when the APA flipped to the 6th edition this summer. Still haven't taken time to recreate the new templates in Open Office, so I'm limping along on the ones in Word. Drat.
• Open Office is still a favorite tool to write in for all of the original reasons I liked it. Easy to use, free, has fantastic word prediction. Now, if I could just get those templates put together...
• Vue not only does great mind mapping, you can attach objects (documents, images, web addresses, etc.) to each of the nodes, then create a presentation that's completely non-linear out of it. So fun.
• MacSpeech Dictate was just recently purchased by the maker of its speech recognition engine, Dragon Naturally Speaking. Since Dragon is, by far, the more developed of the two programs, I'm really looking forward to the enhancements that could come out of it. Dictate is a huge help in working with large blocks of quoted (or noted) text; I've also used it to transcribe interviews from my Livescribe Pulse pen.

Research

This set actually hasn't changed much, but there are some new features in the tools I use. I'll highlight those.

• Zotero is still one of my absolutely favorite tools. With the addition of collaborative groups, syncing, formatable notes, and the new Word for Mac plug-in, I'm just a happy, happy camper. Zotero makes bibliographic management a snap.
• Skim doesn't currently have any shiny new features, but it's still rock-solid and handles PDFs like a champ. Read to me, Skim, so that I'll actually pay attention through those lengthy and complex sentences composed of multiple polysyllabic words.
• Mendeley does have shiny new features! The one-click web importer is downright simple, and collaborative annotations make Mendeley more and more a social research tool.
  
• Delicious, Google Reader, and Wikitap are still in my well-beloved-and-well-used list.