[nabs-l] Question about Braille Textbooks

[Ashley Bramlett]

Mikayla,

Generally speaking, your TVI is right. College texts are usually a little 
bigger than high school ones and your professors will likely require recent 
versions which came out within a year or two. Braille would be impractical. 
Each book would be like 40 or 50 volumes and with four classes, you could 
not store all braille texts. Next, its real expensive to produce a braille 
text that will likely not be used again because textbooks are quickly 
outdated. And finally, there is little time to get books transcribed. So you 
will need to depend on electronic texts and use speech output for books or 
use Learning ally books. Most colleges nowadays provide electronic texts 
from the publisher and then you can read on your pc or on a text to speech 
device such as a vr stream. You can read braille on a braille display if you 
have that or a braille notetaking device. Your electronic texts may be able 
to be read on a braille display.
While  most texts will be read with speech, there are some options to obtain 
electronic braille if you can read via a braille display.
I do not know if you have a braille notetaker or braille display.


Here are some options for obtaining  electronic braille. NLS also produces 
some classics in  hard copy braille so you might find those useful for 
literature classes. For instance, one english class I signed up for and 
ended up dropping required the Great Gatsby, and I got that through my NLS 
network library in braille.

For electronic braille:

1. For older books out of copy right or famous documents such as  The 
Constitution, Gettysburg address, I have a Dream Speech or the Bible, try 
the internet. Project Guttenberg has many free downloadable books and 
documents.

2. Use BARD to download electronic braille books; and if you do not use BARD 
through your NLS program, I highly suggest signing up.

3. Assuming you have bookshare though bookshare.org, you can download many 
books in brf format. BRF simply means they were already translated into 
braille.

4. If you can pay for books, check National braille press which offers 
everything in ebraille and hard copy nowadays.

But yeah, your TVI is pretty right. I got through college and current 
electives primarily via audio.

HTH,
Ashley
-----Original Message----- 
From: Mikayla Gephart via NABS-L
Sent: Monday, January 02, 2017 1:39 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Cc: Mikayla Gephart
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Question about Braille Textbooks

Hi,
     I do not have an answer for you. However, this is making me feel better 
about college. My TVI had said that I may not get braille textbooks in 
college. Thank you for sending this message.
Mikayla
> On Jan 2, 2017, at 3:51 AM, Vejas Vasiliauskas via NABS-L 
> <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I hope everyone is having a great 2017.  I understand that there is not 
> going to be a "One-size fits all" answer to my question, so was just 
> curious about what others have done.
> I have 2 classes that will have Braille textbooks.  This is different to 
> last semester, when I had all electronic books.
> I am in a single room but regardount of rooming situations, when it comes 
> to storing all the volumes of textbooks do you:
> - Store all textbooks in your dorm?
> - Keep the volumes you currently need in the dorm, but keep the rest in 
> the DSS office?
> Or any other method?
> Also, do you email the teacher ahead of time to ask which pages will be 
> used?
> Any ideas would be great.
> Thanks,
> Vejas
>
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