Tips & Tricks in Using a Kindle for Academic Reading

With the dawn of the iPad on the scene, some people are wondering why they'd bother with a Kindle. After all, the Kindle can't play games or surf the web (ok, it can, but it's k.l.u.n.k.y.)--or at least, not yet it can't. I've posted before about Kindle accessibility and the advantages and disadvantages of a Kindle for students with disabilities. There have been several pilot programs with the Kindle for college-level reading and they have started posting their results. Examples include Reed College and Princeton University. For the sake of argument, here, let's just assume you have a Kindle, and talk about doing academic reading on one of these bad boys.

Locating Info Within the Book

I'm a very visual person. I use highlighting and margin notes in my books now in order to do one thing: remember where on the page to locate information I may want to use again. Often, I highlight quotes I may want to use in a paper, or I will write a phrase that summarizes a couple of paragraphs and include arrows or brackets. When I go back to what I was reading in order to use it, I use these visual cues to help me locate information. With a physical book, I can flip through the pages and locate what I want. Flipping through the pages is a no-can-do on the Kindle. You'll have to approach it a little differently.

While you're reading:

• Make generous use of Kindle's highlighting feature. Conventional wisdom says to highlight between 10-15% of the material in a physical book. Because you are going to use these highlights differently, shoot for 20% or so. Err on the side of highlighting more than you think you'll need.
  
• Keep the highlights relatively short. The bigger your preferred font size, the shorter you should make your highlights. The reason: when you view My Notes & Marks, where the Kindle stores your highlights, it will display between two (big font size) and size (small font size) lines of highlight. If you are trying to locate something and it's below that cutoff line, you won't see it when you're scrolling through the Notes & Marks.
• Type your notes as tags, not conventional notes. Typing on the Kindle is a bit of a, well, pain in the gluteus. The less you have to do, the easier it will be. Think of your notes as labels (tags) that will help you get back to related content. You can put multiple tags in a note, if you want. I also don't worry about capitalization or punctuation in the notes as it just slows the note entry process further. A bonus of this practice is that it encourages you to make concise (1 word!) summaries of the material you're reading, which will help your retention and comprehension. (For example, the tags I'd create for this paragraph are: tag, label, category, summary, notes, suggestions. Yours might be different from mine!)

Finding the information again:

• Search! The search feature in the Kindle is pretty darn handy. If you remember a key word or phrase (the shorter the better, by the way) that can help you locate a passage again, search for it. You can also search just your tags (notes) by typing in the search word, then moving the 5-way button to the right until it highlights 'notes'.
• View your marks. In the Menu, select "View My Notes & Marks" (one book) or in the Home screen select "My Clippings" (all your books). Because, again, I'm recommending a generous use of highlighting, there will be several pages of marks. While this is a little time-consuming to flip through, it is significantly faster than trying to remember where you saw that one thing and going through page turn after page turn in the full book. In one book I was using for my last paper, I had 72 pages of notes and marks. However, I was always able to find what I was looking for...which is kinda the point, right?
  

Citations

There's just not a lot of agreeement out there on how to cite Kindle books. The lack of real page numbers makes specific references just a bit wonky. However, the folks at the APA were kind enough to actually address citing the Kindle. For other style formats (MLA, Chicago, etc.), the consensus seems to be to consider it an online/electronic, unpaginated source. Remember, cite the version you read. If you read the Kindle, cite it. If you read the physical book, cite that. If you read it on Google Books, cite that.

Those Darn PDFs

One of the best - and worst - features of the Kindle is its ability to read PDFs. Yes, you can read PDFs natively on the Kindle with no conversion process by either sending them through Amazon's service (cheap) or connecting your Kindle to your computer with the USB cord and dragging the PDFs to the Documents folder on your Kindle (free). However, you can't annotate, change sizes, have the Kindle read it aloud, or any of the other features that make the Kindle such a good reader. I'm going to let you in on a secret that will make this easier... shhh, lean in a little closer....

Go download Calibre.

Free. Open source. End of problem. Wish I'd discovered this three terms ago when I first got my Kindle.

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.

RFBD - Now with free individual student account goodness!

Free.
One of my favorite words, free. Definitely tops on my list of four-letter-words-that-begin-with-the-letter-F. And, I'm excited to report, a word that now applies to individual student memberships with RFB&D (Recordings for the Blind & Dyslexic).

Since 1951, RFB&D has been providing people with print disabilities access to human voice readings of books - especially textbooks. For years, SOU has held an institutional membership in RFB&D that has provided access for hundreds of students with print disabilities to textbooks. We continue to do so, but a new option is now available for students. Students can sign up for an individual membership that allows them free, independent access to thousands of books.

Here's why that's so wonderful:

• You have the control. See which of your textbooks are available without waiting in the queue behind other students.
• Changed your class last minute? You can have the new textbook downloaded tonight.
• SOU can only supply texts for your classes. Want to read something else? Go for it! There's thousands of books - including bestsellers, trade paperbacks, classics...re-discover pleasure reading.
  
• Dual-enrolled in another college? Individual membership allows you to see which of those books are available - without any processing by the other school.
• You don't have to purchase the print version in order to get the accessible version. Cool, eh?
  
• Did I mention it's free?

Think that's pretty nifty? Looking for how to sign up? Here's what to do:

• Go to RFB&D's Individual Membership page to sign up
• You'll need to provide information about your disability in the certification process. Your friendly neighborhood Disability Resources staff can serve as certifying professionals if we have your documentation on file. Just put one of our names and email address in the form where it asks for a certifying professional. RFB&D will get in contact with us. It's fast and easy!
• Decide which format you want. If you are on dialup, go with the DAISY CDs. You'll have to wait for them to be shipped, but these downloads are large and will be frustrating on dialup. Otherwise, I strongly recommend the DAISY Download. You get all the neato cool navigation of DAISY in a yummy download... quick access any time of the day! I have noticed that the Download Manager has a tendency to crash unexpectedly, so plan to babysit the download just a bit.
• Start browsing and reading! Woohoo!
  

You will need a way to play the books that RFB&D has. If you are a current student, we can loan the Victor Vibe and Victor Wave hardware players that we have; these are on a term-by-term basis and priority is given to students using alternate format text for their current classes. However, RFB&D also has a number of hardware and software players that are available. The software players are pretty inexpensive. Because of the digital rights management that RFB&D uses to comply with copyright laws, you will need to purchase the player (hardware or software) or a user authorization key through RFB&D. If you have questions about this - ask me!

As you look forward through school to graduation and beyond, independent access to what you need is going to be really, really important. Get a jump on it now, and it's one less thing to figure out when you graduate!

Don't forget that Bookshare also has a free student membership - since 2007.

Did I mention it's free?

Questions, comments, or celebrations? Share them in the comments!

Desktop Distractions? Block 'Em Out!

So, you're working on a paper. Chugging away, everything's going great... and then, since you have Facebook running in the background, one of those little popups comes up at the bottom of your screen. You stop writing to read it...

(30 minutes later)

Oh, yeah, you were writing a paper. Hmmm... train of thought has not only left the station, but it took all your baggage with it.

There are some ways to deal with desktop distractions. Today, we'll look at some options. If you have other techniques or technology that you find helpful, post it in the comments!

Clear the Visual Clutter with Ghoster or Isolator

Concentrate only on one window at a time and dim the rest of your screen. Both programs work quite similarly, making only the active application clearly visible.

Ghoster (Windows)
Ghoster does a nice job of clearing the background, though it doesn't (as you can see) block all visibility. However, with everything in the dark, I'm much less likely to wander off to it. My favorite part is that it also dims out the Task Bar, which likes to distract me with its flashing lights and popups.






Isolate (Mac)
Isolate can be configured in a few different ways - my favorite is the complete blackout. Because my Mac doesn't pop stuff up at me nearly as often as my Windows machine does, I'm less worried about the fact that the Dock doesn't dim.

Really Distracted? Lock Yourself Out With LeechBlock!

If you know that the siren song of the web will be calling your name (shhh, Facebook, I'll be with you later!), but you still need to use the, well, useful sites to complete your homework, you might want to try LeechBlock.
LeechBlock - Firefox extension (Windows/Mac)

LeechBlock allows you to specify specific sites, like MySpace or Facebook, that tend to be less than productive for you. You choose the sites, you choose the times to block them. You can, of course, choose to unblock them, but generally the extra steps you need to do that will help you remember why you blocked them in the first place.

Better than Spell Check on Steroids

Have you heard about Ginger?

I was absolutely blown away by the demo at the AHEAD conference this summer. Ginger has the potential to completely change the way that students with dyslexia and other visual processing learning disabilities feel about writing.

"Why for how come so?" I hear you asking. Ginger takes the spelling and mechanics errors dyslexics can often make and corrects them by looking at the syntax of the sentence, rather than just the word in isolation. An example they have posted on their site:

Original: H ws nt fileing wale whan he retrnd
MS Word's corrections: H was not filing wale when he returned
Ginger's corrections: He was not feeling well when he returned


One thing you'll notice immediately about Ginger is the contextual help for choosing the correct word.

One other thing I also notice is that it's slow. Ginger does all of its work over the Internet, so even with my high-speed connection here in my office at SOU, there's still some wait time. Pretty much, that's the only downside I'm finding.

Currently, Ginger is in beta - which means it's free! Download it and give it a try; you may just find Ginger revolutionizing your writing.

So, Does 138+ Free or Cheap Tools for Learning Appeal to You?

I'm going to state up front that this is a shameless infomercial.

Having said that, fellow learners of the world, here's the scoop. Once again this winter, I'm teaching Technology for Learning. It's designed to give every student, regardless of major, abilities, or learning style, technology tools they can use to be more effective and efficient. Besides, it's fun! My basic philosophy: if properly chosen, technology tools can make a student's life much easier and improve their grades at the same time. This class is all about finding out which tools will do that for you, specifically. At the end of the class, you'll come out with a personal technology plan that lays out what your goals are, what tools you've chosen, and how you'll implement those tools.

An exciting new addition this time around is the Tech4LearnCourse Wiki. Through the wiki, students will collaborate on reviews of tools, their personal technology plans, a glossary and more. The coolest feature, however, is that your access to the wiki doesn't go away when the class ends! Every student who has taken the class still has access, so you can find out about new tools and contribute to the discussion for as long as you want!

Who should take this class?

• Students returning to college. If you haven't been around academic tools for awhile, there's some new stuff that can really help you!
• Students whose first language is not English. English breaks way too many of its own rules to be easy to learn! Use technology to help you.
• Students who need help in any of the following: reading, writing, math, studying, researching, organizing (yes, I know that's most of us!), or navigating the electronic campus
• Students with disabilities who would like to find more ways to interact with information independently and efficiently
• Teachers of any level who would like to find new tools for their students (and themselves)
• Anyone with an interest in learning new technology tools to make their work more efficient and fun!
  

Today being the first day of registration for winter, I'll also throw in the details - CRN 4309, USEM 199, 2 credits, 1-2 Tuesdays and Thursdays. Very low reading requirements, high play value, and a resource that extends long beyond the class... how can you resist?

Premier AT Home Ending Soon

I've blogged before about some of the great tools available at SOU in the Premier AT Suite. Last academic year, we had a little more room in the AT budget and were able to purchase a subscription to the Premier AT Home service, which allowed students to download as many of the tools in the suite as they liked, for free.

Faithful readers of this blog will know how I like the word "free." It's right up there with "chocolate."

Our subscription will be ending on November 22nd, and, budgets being what they are, we aren't going to be able to subscribe this year. I'm hoping to do it again next year, but it will depend on what the budgetary demands are. In the broader scheme of things, accommodations get funded first - and that's what's happened this year.

Bottom line, folks - if you've thought of downloading the Premier Suite but haven't done it yet, do so before November 22nd. The url, username and password you need are in the Disability Services channel of the MySOU portal.

Introducing... Robobraille!

Looking for a quick way to get a Braille or audio document? Don't have immediate access to Duxbury or text-to-speech software? Have no fear, Robobraille is here! I'm pretty quick on the short document conversions most of the time, folks, but this is way faster. Get your accessible file in just a few minutes. I sent a file of about 10 pages and got the MP3 back in 4 minutes. Your time will vary based on server traffic.

Completely free to non-commercial users (that's you, students!), simply send the document you want converted to sixdot@robobraille.org (for Braille) or usspeech@robobraille.org (for MP3 audio). For a more...unique... experience with audio, send it to britspeech@robobraille.org and receive a British English audio file. Other Braille language files are also supported. It's a good idea to read through the instructions, as it contains ways to tweak your files to fit you, such as the audio speed.

Currently, MS Word documents, plain text, and RTF files are supported. They anticipate supporting PDF files (woohoo!) in the near future.

This nifty service was formed by a partnership of a number of European agencies. If you like the service, send them a donation to keep it free for non-commercial users.

Serendipity, get your OATS

Every once in awhile, I run across something that makes me smack my forehead and say, “Why didn’t I know about this before?!” Today was one of those days. I was cruising through the Net, looking for tools to include in my Technology for Learning class, when the skies opened, the sun shone, and a voice from my computer said, “Open Source Assistive Technology Software. OATS. Find it and you will be satisfied.”

Ok, that’s not quite the way it happened. Here’s how it really went down.

Reading through Ron Graham’s Access Ability blog (using my new friend, Google Reader), I learned about Ohio State’s initiative to put free assistive technology in their students’ hands. A Very Cool Project, I might add, and yes, I wish I’d thought of it first. Several of the open source apps they included looked like they had potential for my class, so I went cruising through the list.

Aha! Hidden away in their list was a program called T-Bar. The description was intriguing, so I went Googling for it and ended up at OATS. (T-Bar is no more, looks like, but the same developer did have one called Vu-Bar that performs what I was looking for. Dyslexics, check it out!) Oh my… an entire site of open source AT apps. That means FREE, for those who aren’t familiar with the concept of open source.

I should just go home now. I think I’ve earned my paycheck today - all by reading blogs and following the serendipity trail. Woohoo!

Insomnia has its benefits - Google Reader & LifeHacker

For some reason, the hours between 3 and 5:30 seem to be a difficult time for me to actually stay asleep. But that’s good news, blog readers, because last night I had a wonderful time prancing around the ‘Net and found great blog fodder!

Some of you may have already found Google Reader, another of the ever-growing number of free applications provided by the advertising geniuses at Google. Google Reader is an RSS feed, which brings updates from websites directly to your desktop (or browser, as in this case). Think of it a bit like a running stock ticker for news, exciting blog entries, or anything else on which you want to keep up to date. Ho-hum, not really blog-worthy news, right?

Well, think again. Google has just announced that its Reader feed is accessible to screen readers! This is news, because most dynamic (constantly updating) content on the web is not screen-reader friendly. Granted, there are limitations… it’s currently only accessible to Firevox, the self-voicing extension for Firefox, and Firefox 3, which is still in beta. However, this is a step in the right direction, making dynamic content usable to people with print disabilities.

The other place I spent a lot of time last night (or morning?) was on LifeHacker. Ok, any site that easily steals an hour from you without you knowing it doesn’t really qualify as saving you time… but in my defense, I was catching up on stuff posted there that had long passed me by! While LifeHacker isn’t really assistive technology per se, I did find a large number of items that would be of especial interest to those with learning disabilities or ADD. Particularly interesting were the items in the “Mind Hacks” category… all kinds of ways you can train your brain to work more efficiently.

Time to get off your duff and take a class

Loyal readers of this blog (there are a couple of you, right?) will know that I really like playing with new technology. Those of you who’ve been in my office will know that I really like explaining how it can work for you. So here’s your opportunity…

Beginning Spring term, I’m teaching a 2 credit class called Technology for Learning. (That’s USEM 199 for those who want to find it in the class schedule right now.) This class is open to everyone and will go through a truly broad range of technology tools that can help you be a better student. Every student has to do some of these things at some point in each class:

• read
• write
• research
• math
• organize
• study
• network with others

This class will help you to do all those things in ways that work best for you! I’m designing this class under a Universal Design for Learning format, which means I’m going to make this class as accessible and usable for the largest number of people possible. (For example, one of the “readings” in the first week is an ASL video on multiple intelligences!)

I’m hugely excited about this class. If you have questions about it, please let me know. Looking forward to seeing you there!

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.

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.

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!