Creating Accessible eReader Formats: A How-To Story

A growing number of students are finding that the scalability of text size, integrated dictionary, and text-to-speech options of the Amazon Kindle and Apple's iPad are fantastic features. They also enjoy the speed of purchase, lighter physical load, and (often) lower purchase price, as do their peers. A growing number of textbooks are available in this way.

But what happens when a student with a print disability depends on those formats in order to have access to the text...and it's not available for purchase in that format? Enter Disability Resources! I'm going to focus in this post on how we create those formats in response to some colleague questions. Info on the legalities and suchlike for our students is available elsewhere.

Creating DAISY Files - A Beginner's Overview

This post is thanks to another colleague question. She asked:
"I have a student who has a DAISY player and needs his books in DAISY format. I checked with Bookshare and RFB&D and neither one of them has his needed books. Is there a simple process to convert a PDF into DAISY format?"

Is there a simple process to convert PDF to DAISY? Yup - outsource it!

I'm only partially kidding. Creating DAISY is a time-consuming process. Here's an overview of a process using whatever optical character recognition (OCR) software you already use, free DAISY conversion software, and any text-to-speech voices you already have installed:

1. Run the PDF through Abbyy FineReader or Omnipage to create a Word document
2. Use the Save As DAISY add-in for Word
3. Use DAISY Pipeline to create a full DAISY book

The links above will take you to wiki pages that will tell you more about these programs, where to download them, and how to use them. Keep in mind that minimum markup for a simple DAISY book is title information, language markup, chapter headers, and page numbers. You will need some rudimentary HTML skills in order to do this.

Other options:

• Dolphin's EasyConverter or EasyProducer software can help automate much of the process
• Don't create DAISY files - create mp3s instead. This does not duplicate the superior navigability of DAISY files, but can suffice if the student needs the text fast
• Send RTF files to Bookshare and they will convert to DAISY

Hope this is helpful in getting you started!

Good News / Bad News

There's been a couple of developments I've been tracking in the alternate format text world that bear sharing today.

The Good News

O'Reilly Books, prolific and well-respected publisher of tech books often used for computer science courses, has for some time been providing all of their texts to Bookshare to create accessible versions. Today, O'Reilly announced that they will add text DAISY formats of their books to their lineup of formating options. O'Reilly joins startup publisher FlatWorld Knowledge in the small cadre of publishers who offer books in formats that anyone, regardless of disability, can purchase in the same way, at the same time, and at the same (or lower!) price. Kudos, O'Reilly. We hope the big publishers learn from your example!

The Not-Quite-As-Good News, But Still Better Than It Was Before

The Blind Access Journal has thoroughly reviewed the Kindle 3's new accessibility features. If this is of interest to you, I highly recommend reading Larry's review. There's definitely both good news and bad news there. Bottom line - Kindle still has a way to go to get to equal access for their blind customers.

EBSCO Gets Built-In Reader (video post)

Some exciting news on the library front. EBSCO, the company that supplies the article database most commonly used in the SOU Hannon Library, has decided to partner with NextUp. This is good news for students who can benefit from hearing as well as seeing print, as it means you can have articles read aloud to you from wherever you access the EBSCO database. Details are available from EBSCO's press release.

I wanted to see how it worked, though, so here's what I found. Video seemed the best way to capture the experiment. (It does work in both Mac and PC environments, by the way.)

One for my noob friends

Students, unless you want the skinny behind how alternate format text production actually works, y'alls can just skip this one. This post is in answer to a question I got from a friend at another university; she's just jumping in to this whole world of alt text production and needed a bit of an orientation. Not being one to waste a good long email, I've published it here for others. I had a ton of help from the disability services community when I was getting started in this stuff, so I look at questions like this (and I do get them more often than you'd think!) as a way of paying it forward.

My friend is looking for resources outside of her own campus, as right now she doesn't have the ability to establish her own production center. Her question was specifically about audio formats. These conditions influence the information I've put together here.

Eligibility & Copyright

For many of the sources I'm going to mention, there's an eligibility determination that needs to be made by your disability office and communicated to the source. The four criteria that are almost universally applied are:

1. Student has documented print disability. Some sources will restrict to vision impairment, learning disability, or physical disability.
   
2. Student has registered for class, and class requires the book requested. (In the case of graduate school, can potentially include every book in the known universe!)
3. Student, or someone on behalf of the student, has purchased a copy of the book. (Can be used, though the publishers won't tell you that.) Does not apply with RFB&D or Bookshare.
4. Student needs to sign usage agreement that informs them of legal issues related to copyright. Some sources will have their own. I use our own as well: SOU's usage agreement.

Formats

Audio is actually a category rather than a single thing. There are several ways to provide it, and I use a combination of them depending on the needs of the student and the availability of different formats.

• DAISY: The gold standard. DAISY files are actually generally a combination of xml (html with a specialized markup) and mp3 files. Audio-only DAISY (like RFB&D produces) is like an mp3 with navigation. Text-based DAISY (like Bookshare produces) uses text-to-speech from the computer and has on-screen text to follow along with. Both "flavors" have amazing navigation: you can go to a specific chapter, page, or heading; speed it up or slow it down; bookmark; skip.
• MP3: Generally will be text-to-speech synthesized by a computer, unless you're purchasing an audiobook (which is a performance rather than just audio access) from iTunes, Audible, or one of the other audiobook vendors. This is the one students are most comfortable with because it's familiar, though it's actually the least helpful in terms of accommodation because it's not very navigable or manipulable.
• Electronic text with text-to-speech: There are a huge number of text-to-speech applications out there that can read most electronic documents. For home use, I generally point my students to free and inexpensive options, though we also discuss some of the more fully-featured options as well. Many schools use this as the way they provide alternate format text because it's the most flexible for the student, costs less than DAISY to produce, and is far more manipulable than mp3 files.

E-textbooks

Be careful.Many of the e-textbook formats out there use digital rights management or formatting in ways that make the textbook completely inaccessible for students who use assistive technology (like text-to-speech software) to read. FlatWorld Knowledge does have accessible books: their online reading option is accessible with assistive technology and they offer audio as an option for all of their books. In addition, they're partnering with Bookshare, so Bookshare should have the FlatWorld catalog available this fall.

Bottom line: ask about the accessibility of e-texts before purchase. By "accessibility", I mean "access for people who use assistive technology to read", not "can students get to it on the web." Even if the answer is no, you at least know where you stand and your students won't receive an ugly surprise. Plus, the more customers who ask, the more the textbook industry realizes that this is an issue an the more likely they are to do something about it.

Sources

• RFB&D: Recordings for the Blind & Dyslexic has been around a long time, and they are very good at what they do. There are free individual memberships for postsecondary students. Specific books can be requested for production, but these require long lead times. Formats provided: audio-only DAISY in downloadable or CD versions, which require specialized software or hardware to play; WMA files for Windows Media Player and some mp3 player devices. Human voice readings (an essential if using Shakespeare, Beowulf, and the like). Membership required; disability must be certified by clinician or disability office at university.
• Bookshare.org: Newer on the block, Bookshare has a growing library. They also have free individual memberships for postsecondary students. Specific books can be requested for production, but require long lead times.Formats provided: plain text (for public domain books), full text DAISY files, and brf (Braille ready format - can be embossed directly to Braille or read on a refreshable Braille device). Bookshare provides free software to read DAISY files. Membership required; disability must be certified by clinician or disability office at university.
• National Library Service: Run by the Library of Congress and most state libraries, the NLS makes books available to eligible patrons. Their registration process is entirely individual, so I haven't worked with them other than to refer students to them. Formats available: Braille, DAISY.
• AccessText Network: This is a cooperative group of the largest publishers to make requesting electronic copies of textbooks for conversion to accessible formats faster and easier for disability offices. No direct student connection. However, if you're going to outsource production, requesting files from AccessText will make the production faster, cheaper, and more accurate than scanning files. The membership agreement is full of legalese - may want to run it through legal counsel. Someone from your institution will need to go through the training, etc. to start using it. It's free right now, but they're going to start charging $500 a year this summer. Given the time and resource savings over scanning, it's worth it.
• Alternate Text Production Center: This is the production center for the California Community Colleges. They will produce books in Braille or e-text for other schools using a fee-for-service model.
• Badger Accessibility Services: Fee-for-service based out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They're fast and extremely accurate.
  
• Digilife Media: Conversion service with a pretty good reputation.
  
• Read How You Want: Bookstore for Braille and DAISY titles. Catalog is fairly small.
• Librivox: Human-read audio versions of books in the public domain. They have fantastic readers, and it's all free.
• OpenLibrary: Has a huge number of DAISY books and is adding them all the time.
• The standard audiobook places: iTunes, Audible.com, Audiobooks.com, etc.

Text to Speech Applications

I'm actually going to point you back to other posts in my blog for this category. There's a number of posts there that can be helpful. Basically, text to speech applications read text from the screen through a computer synthesized voice. The built-in voices in the Windows operating system are pretty awful (though Anna, which comes with Windows 7, is a definite step up), but there are many out there for purchase that work much much better.

Wow, you made it to the end! Hope this is helpful.

Using Skim to Read PDFs Aloud on Your Mac

This is one of those situations where I went looking for directions to a specific task in order to give them to a student...and couldn't find them. Yet, this is a function I use fairly regularly and refer students to, so, gosh, wouldn't it be helpful to have those instructions available?

Hence, this post.

Skim is a fabulous free program for the Mac. All of the things that I would want to do with a printed PDF I can do with Skim (except perhaps wadding up the file and shooting wastepaper baskets with it). I can highlight, circle, underline, write notes, and put stickies on the page. What's even better, though, I can also search those notes and stickies, or the whole document, quickly and easily. Further, using the Mac's built-in capability to turn text into speech, I can have the document read aloud to me. That read-aloud feature is also built into Acrobat Reader, but using Skim gives me all those annotation tools plus the read-aloud. Here's how.

The Setup

Let's get your Mac ready to read whatever you ask it to.

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Click on Universal Access
3. Check the "Enable access for assistive devices" box in the Seeing tab
4. Go back to System Preferences (Show All)
5. Click on Speech
6. Choose a System Voice that doesn't irritate you. Alex (available with OS 10.5 and later) is dandy. For older systems, Victoria or Vicki are usually good choices. Some of the others will likely drive you 'round the bend. Test them by clicking Play
   
7. Choose a speed that's comfortable by adjusting the Speaking Rate slider about some and then clicking Play
8. Create a shortcut key to read - this will make the reading process much much faster later on. Do this by checking the "Speak selected text when the key is pressed" box and pressing the key (or key combination) you want to use to start reading aloud. I use CTRL+R. Make sure you select something that isn't used for another reason, then click OK
9. Close System Preferences

Using Speech in Skim

There are two ways to read: starting from the beginning and reading straight through, or reading just specifically selected text.
To read straight through:

1. Open Skim, then open the document you want to read (make sure it's a PDF)
   
2. In the Edit menu, select Speech, then Start Speaking
3. To stop, go to the Edit menu, select Speech, then Stop Speaking

Sometimes, though, you'll want to pick up on page 2, or you only really want to read one section aloud. Here's how to do that:

1. Highlight the text you want to read aloud
2. Press the key combination you set up earlier (told you it would come in handy!)
3. To stop, press the key combination again
   

The Catch

Unfortunately, the read-aloud function will only work in PDFs that are text-based rather than image-based. If you can't highlight and select text, you won't be able to read it aloud. You also won't be able to highlight it, but you can use the other annotation tools in Skim. The good news? If you are an SOU student receiving alternate format text (or are eligible to) from us, I can absolutely convert these image-based PDFs for you. Just email them to me and I'll send you back text-based PDFs.

Have you found other great text-to-speech options on the Mac? Let me know about them in the comments!

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!

Kindle - Friend or Foe? A Review of the Kindle DX

If you follow accessibility news at all, you've probably heard some of the kerfuffle about the Amazon Kindle. For those who don't want to follow the link, I'll try to sum up the issues quickly:

• Starting with the Kindle 2, text-to-speech is available. This means that alternate format text is instantly available with no conversion, no extra cost, no extra time... to everyone who might benefit from it.
• Only the book text can be read aloud. Menus, other functions, and PDF files are not accessible through text-to-speech.
• The Authors' Guild got concerned about copyright rights.
• Amazon agreed to turn off the text-to-speech function on specific books or whole catalogs at the publisher's request.
  
• So far, 33 disability organizations have joined ReadingRights.org in an effort to make this new advancement available for all. This would include keeping text-to-speech intact on all books and extending it to the menus and other functions.
• Injunctions have been filed against several postsecondary institutions who are participating in a pilot project with Amazon; the basis is that the device and content are not accessible.
  

But, is the Kindle worth the fuss?

I bought a Kindle DX about a month ago so that I could have access to the books and scholarly articles I'm reading for my doctoral work without having to lug them all with me. I wanted the DX rather than the smaller, lighter, and less expensive Kindle 2 because the DX has the capability of handling native PDF files, rather than going through the rather cumbersome process of sending them to Amazon for conversion. What's been my reaction?

Love it.

But I don't have a disability that affects my reading, so how I evaluate it personally and how I evaluate it for student use might be different, right? Yes and no. Let's break it down.

Reasons to Buy a Kindle if You Are a Student With a Print Disability

• All the reasons that everyone else would buy a Kindle! Cool factor; much lighter than carrying 3,500 texts (on the DX - 1,500 on the 2); free wireless; immediate access to thousands of books, magazines, and newspapers (including an increasing number of textbooks); book samples; great display; ability to change font size on the fly; highlighting, annotations; text to speech...
• For students with low vision, the ability to change font size is great. Depending on your functional vision, it may not be large enough. A test-drive is absolutely recommended before plunking down the cash. You will probably want to have a handheld magnifier about though, as the menus and other functions, as well as the Amazon Store, don't enlarge.
• Text-to-speech is a big deal, and it's available for the large majority of items. The voices are quite tolerable and do have speed adjustments. More importantly, text-to-speech is available without waiting for someone else (me) to convert it. Buy and read. That's it. Doesn't that sound wonderful?
• For those textbooks that aren't yet available in the Amazon store, I can convert your text to a format that can be read on the Kindle. This is no different from the other text conversion services here at SOU; only the end product is different.
• There are thousands of free books out there at Project Gutenberg, LibriVox, and other sites. You can read these on the Kindle as well.
• For students with mobility impairments affecting your neck and/or spine, reading on the Kindle is pretty darn nifty. There are covers that double as a book stand so that you can read at a 90-degree angle quite comfortably. The buttons are large enough and have enough tactile response to be relatively easy to manipulate.
  

Reasons Not to Buy a Kindle If You Are a Student with a Print Disability

• Currently, the Kindle is not accessible for users who are blind. Frustrating, but true.
• It's not cheap. The Kindle 2 is currently going for $299, and the DX is $489. Yikes.
  
• Your text-to-speech capability is in the hands of Amazon... with no guarantees that it will continue to be available to you. This is worrisome.
• Some degree of fine-motor control is necessary to be able to operate the 5-way button (scroll and select functions) and the keyboard. Other buttons, especially the two you'll use most often - next page and previous page - are fairly large and can be manipulated with a closed fist.

What's your thoughts on the Kindle? Shout 'em out in the comments!

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.

Speech-to-Text and Vice Versa on the Mac

This week, a colleague on a listserv was asking about AT software for Macs in a college setting. Specifically, he was asking about speech-to-text and text-to-speech programs. With a few cosmetic tweaks here and there, here's my response...

The built-in stuff

• VoiceOver is a screenreader built in to the operating system. Like most screenreaders, there's a lot to learn in using it. For help, check out a tutorial series.
• Speech is a built-in text-to-speech functionality that works really well in TextEdit, though also works in other Mac apps. Go to the TextEdit menu, choose Services, and then Start Speaking. You can customize this in System Preferences. You can also download a script that will make an iTunes-compatible audiobook from a text document.
• Voice control of your computer is also built in to the Mac with Speech Recognition. Lifehacker did a great guide to using Speech Recognition.
  

Other software

• MacSpeech Dictate is a speech-to-text program built on the Dragon engine. Works well, though not quite as fully functional as Dragon (yet - it just came out in April).
• Kurzweil's Mac flavor is as fully featured as the Windows program. It does have a problem reading color files that were generated on a Windows Kurzweil machine (ask me how I found this out!), though Kurzweil tells me they are working on this. However, it's got lovely iTunes integration, if you want to take your text on the road.
• GhostReader does a fantastic job of text-to-speech, with some really nice Acapela voices. Cheap, too, at around $30. I blogged GhostReader earlier, along with some other good, inexpensive Mac apps.

If you know of other good text-to-speech (and vice versa) apps for the Mac, yell 'em out in the comments!

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.

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.

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.