[nabs-l] accessible ebooks for school

[Kaiti Shelton]

Ashley,

Have you checked out Bookshare?  Over the past few years they've
really taken an initiative in getting textbooks uploaded to the site.
They're not always there, but it's a great place to check.  Even if
you can't find your textbooks exactly, I've used them for school when
teachers required at least one book source and citation for a paper,
or something scholarly to refer back to.  You can also request a book
to be added to the collection.  They also have New York Times
Best-Sellers, popular titles and series, and even some daily
newspapers.  Membership is free for students as long as you have proof
of disability and are attending a recognized K-12 school, or
college/university.  Non-students only have to pay 50 dollars a year
for unlimitted access to the library.  Books are available in brf,
daisy, mp3, and I believe one other format.

Although we can't use Kindles I really like my BookSense for reading
books.  From what I understand it does basically what a kindle does
and can announce the pages, move by line, paragraph, page, etc through
book documents, and has optional male or female voices for reading.
It also comes with a document reading mode so you can use it to
quickly have documents in audible format, a recording feature for
voice memos, and space to store other audio files.  The book and audio
reading sections of the device recognize several file formats
including brf, txt, doc, and rtf, and I also believe the kwb although
it's been a while since I've had a BrailleNote so don't quote me on
that last one.  There are also separate sections set up for NFB
Newsline, NLS, Bookshare, and personal documents.

On 1/6/13, Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I know we often get  books from our disability support service, dss,
> office.
> But, since they are slow in responding, I try to do what I can alone; for
> instance, I use my own learning ally account as opposed to going through
> them.
>
> I know more and more books are available via electronic text for all
> students.
> I was wanting to know about this option.
> I often use the old fashioned way with readers since I can learn best with a
> human voice. With a reader, I can get them to spell words, describe the
> figures, and tell me what is bold or italics. I like to know this since bold
> or italics mean vocab or important terms.
>
> I like to know all options though.
> What books have you read electronically? From where? Which format are they
> in and what device or devices do you use to read them? We all know the
> standard ebook readers are not accessible such as Kindle, SonyReader, and
> Nook.
>
> I read on here that Course Smart texts became accessible in 2010. Can anyone
> explain how this service works? Do you rent or buy the ebook? Does the ebook
> have all pages and page numbers in it just as a print copy would?
> Is epub accessible?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Ashley
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-- 
Kaiti