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.

Downloading Google Spreadsheets with a Screenreader

I got an email from someone not too long ago asking for more details on how to download a spreadsheet from Google Docs using a screenreader. (Not going to tell you who it is, since I don't have their permission, but it was someone I really rather admire in the accessibility field. Got all giddy about it and everything, 'cuz I'm just like that.) Thought I'd post it here in case anyone else needs it.

Keep in mind that Google is saying they will have Docs (and the other Edu apps) accessible by Fall 2011, so this may not necessarily be a necessary procedure for long. Also, the nature of webapps being what it is, Google may change everything around in the next 10 minutes and this technique may no longer work. Your mileage may vary, yada yada yada.

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!

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.

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.