[nabs-l] Some Questions About Attending College

Bridget Walker bridgetawalker13 at aol.com
Mon Dec 23 20:37:49 UTC 2013


Hey everyone, 
I just thought of another thing regarding textbooks I did not think of before. 
Sometimes depending on the class and professor you can get the previous edition from learning ally or bookshare so you don't have to go to the publishers. For the longest time I thought it was just an issue with my computer, jaws, and OCR when a PDF would not read correctly. I always have words smushed together and jumbled up. 
I don't know how much any of you must use remote databases for papers and such but, I find PDF documents from jstor to be really bad. Ones from Ebsco or the gale database are not bad. I just think it's weird how jaws has like this love hate relationship with PDF documents. 
Just some thoughts 
Bridget 


Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 23, 2013, at 3:27 PM, "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> Helga,
> I do not know a easy way around the pictures. Maybe you need to hire a sighted person to help in scanning. Sometimes openbook will ignore graphics, but if there is words in the diagram, it often does not. Scanning is challlenging.
> I'd rather use a human reader than try and scan a book.
> 
> I'd suggest scanning and do the best you can and for chapters with pictures, get some help.
> 
> I despise pdf files for the same reasons. I went to the hastle of dropping off receits with the ds office.
> then, I get the book in pdf. I requested a word file and she said no that she could not get it in word; they only sent her pdf.
> 
> Well, just as you experienced, the pdf was useless. Words were so jumbled together; they were attached to one another and it sounded jibberish.
> Also, every graphic jaws encountered, jaws said graphic and I had to try and arrow down to the text while jaws kept saying graphic, graphic, like ten times.
> It was extremely frustrating. I could not learn this way.
> 
> This is why I found the ds office at the community college nearly useless! I used learning ally primarily for books.
> I'd suggest advocate for a word file or braille books for science.
> For scanning, just scan a page at a time. Set your openbook to batch scan though so it does not process each page one by one.
> 
> Before scanning a text though, see if the publisher sells it in ebook format. Some ebooks are accessible.
> -----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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