[nabs-l] Some Questions About Attending College

Misty Dawn Bradley mistydbradley at gmail.com
Mon Dec 23 06:09:03 UTC 2013


Hi Helga,
I have scanned books on my own, especially when I was in high school and my 
first semester of college, but it is rather time-consuming. I have not found 
a way to do more than one page at one time, but I did visit a college campus 
who had a good DS office, and they had a very nice scanner that fed the 
pages and could scan a book in around 45 minutes. I always wanted a scanner 
like that, but they cost a lot from what the DS office there told me. The 
only thing I didn't like about it was that they had to cut the binding off 
the book so the scanner could feed pages through quickly, since it was not a 
scanner that had the glass top where you have to place and hold the book. It 
looked more like a copier that fed pages in and then sent them back out 
again after scanning them.
I think that if you are going to scan the books yourself, it is good to have 
a scanner that scans quickly. I used to have an HP scanner in the past that 
scanned well but was very slow, and it took so long to scan the book. I now 
have a scanner that scans within a few seconds, so I found that it was 
helpful, because it scanned each page more quickly than the other scanner 
did. Also, I used to scan each chapter as I got to it in the class or right 
before when I knew it was coming up. This was easier for me, because I 
didn't have to do the book all at once, so I would just go chapter by 
chapter. Also, if the professor decided to skip a chapter at the last 
minute, I would not have put in the extra work just to find out that we 
would not have to read the chapter. I would also place a sticky note or 
index card or even a folded up sheet of paper in the book where I left off 
so that I would know where I stopped scanning and could turn back to it 
quickly. I have even folded down the corner of the page at the spot where I 
left off at times. As for knowing which way the book was facing, I would 
open the book and scan the first few pages of it and then go back and read 
them, and if they were the title pages and table of contents like would 
normally be found at the beginning of a book, I would know that I had the 
book open from the front. If it looked like a glosary or appendices or 
things that would ordinarily be in the back of a book, I would figure out 
that I was scanning from the back, and I would know to turn the book over to 
the front side. Once you know which side is the front, you can mark it with 
a sticky note or dot or something that you can mark it with to know that it 
is the front from then on. You could also have a sighted classmate or 
someone you know to find the first page for you that you would need, such as 
page 1 of chapter one, and have them show you which way the book should be 
facing so you can mark it.
As far as OpenBook, it is actually an OCR program, so it can convert the 
scanned image into text that can be read instead of it being a picture or 
graphic.
Hth,
Misty


-----Original Message----- 
From: Helga Schreiber
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2013 12:46 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Some Questions About Attending College

Hi Misty,this is Helga. I just wanted to ask you, do you think I should scan 
my books by myself since I have own open book, and even though I'm totally 
blind? Also, does OCR is included with Open book? Just curious! Also, how 
can I scan books in Open book without doing it a page at a time? Would it be 
a way to do it faster with Open book? Just curious! I will really appreciate 
it, if you could give me some suggestions regarding this. Thanks and God 
bless! :)

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 23, 2013, at 12:30 AM, "Misty Dawn Bradley" 
> <mistydbradley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Helga,
> It sounds like the DS office scanned the book in as a graphic rather than 
> as text. In order to scan something into text, they have to use optical 
> character recognition (OCR) software, such as ABBYY Fine Reader, Kurzweil, 
> OpenBook, or ReadIris. I wonder if you can bring this up to them and tell 
> them that you need it scanned into text and not a graphic? It surprises me 
> that many DS offices are not knowledgable about putting things into 
> accessible format and scanning properly, etc. They should be able to scan 
> it with OCR, and this should correct the problem of the Microsoft Word 
> document coming up as a picture, because scanning it as OCR using an OCR 
> program will scan it and turn it into editable text that can be read by 
> JAWS and will not be a picture.
> I hope this helps,
> Misty
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Helga Schreiber
> Sent: Monday, December 23, 2013 12:20 AM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Some Questions About Attending College
>
> Hi Ashley, this is Helga. I just wanted to ask you, how do I do that? I
> actually have an open book, but it's open book 8. Actually, I happen to 
> have
> Open book 9, but I haven't the chance to install it on my laptop yet. Do I
> use Open book to scan my books? Just to let you know, my books have
> pictures, and how would I know if I'm scanning my books right, since I'm
> actually totally blind? Just curius! What would you do in this case? In
> fact, I told my DSS adviser that I would like to have my books in Word
> format, and she actually gave me my Literature book in Microsoft word
> format, but JAWS didn't read it, due to the fact that it was a picture. 
> This
> is actually what  somebody told me when he saw the file. So in the end, my
> DSS adviser ended up giving me the book in PDF format. And as you know, I
> really don't like PDF because the words are attached together and it's 
> very
> messy! And also I don't like PDF because whenever it comes to be a picture
> or some kind of image, JAWS always says graphic, and it's so hard to pass
> through it, and I actually get borred in trying reading the book. I don't
> know what to do about this situations. Sometimes I really get frustrated
> about them! That is why I would Like to have my books in Braille! My DSS
> office is not as large as others, but my adviser doesn't really coperate
> with me at all. Just to let you know, my first language is not English, 
> and
> sometimes listening to books in audio is not great sometimes, since I 
> don't
> know how the words are spell out. That is why I would like to have my book
> in Braille in order to follow along with the audio book. But not all the
> book only the chapters assign! Actually, my college has an Braille 
> Embosser.
> And when I ask my adviser to print my book in Braille, but only the assign
> chapters of the book, she tells me that the will cost a lot of money! 
> Thanks
> for listening to me! God bless! :)
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Ashley Bramlett
> Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2013 11:41 PM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Some Questions About Attending College
>
> Helga,
> Then scan them yourself or pay someone to do it.
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Helga Schreiber
> Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2013 7:23 PM
> To: louvins at gmail.com ; National Association of BlindStudents mailing list
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Some Questions About Attending College
>
> Hey Joshua, this is Helga. What would happen if my DSS office don't have a
>
> Senta machine to scan my books? But I would like to have them scan! What
> should do about it? I really hate my books in PDF format. I'll really
> appreciate it, if you could give me some suggestions. Thanks and God 
> bless!!
> :-) from my iPhone
>
>> On Dec 21, 2013, at 2:58 PM, "Joshua Hendrickson" <louvins at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Lizzy.  What I used to do, was purchase my textbook from the
>> college bookstore, and give the book and receipt to my disability
>> support office.  The receipt was to show proof of purchase.  Then my
>> disability support office would scan the book or books I needed using
>> kurzweil.  Then I would get the book on cd in mp3 format.  I know now
>> my DS office uses dolphin reader and can put the books in daisy
>> format.  I wouldn't be charged anything to have my DS office scan the
>> books I needed.  At least for me, my textbooks were scanned and
>> proofed very well.  Good luck.  I would also agree that if you're
>> looking for a notetaker for college the braille-sense u2 would be your
>> best bet.  I'm going to see if my REHAB office will get me one.
>>
>>> On 12/21/13, lizzy <lizzym0827 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> I just have a few more questions about text books to add to the
>>> discussion.  I know some of you said that your office of
>>> disabilities will scan them for you, but what have others done?
>>> Do you (personally) have to pay the person in disabilities scan
>>> for you or did they hire someone specifically to do this? Does
>>> anyone scan the books themselves using Kurzwhile? Is there a
>>> machine that can get the job done on its own? Is it usually a
>>> hassle to get the PDF versions of textbooks from publishers?
>>> Thanks,
>>> Lizzy
>>>
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