[NABS-L] Proof of Purchase

[Ashley Bramlett]

Hi,
Wow. Interesting to hear some students find books with no trouble.
I know we have come a long way in terms of accessibility to ebooks, but when 
I graduated years back in 2009, I did not experience getting books digitally 
on a silver platter.
Anya, I find it very surprising you found all books on bookshare. Maybe your 
professors used widely published and circulated books.

In fact, I don't use bookshare since none of my texts were on there except 
for maybe some english books but I preferred audio formats anyway; so I used 
my Recording for the Blind account which is now Learning Ally.


I always struggled accessing books. I would buy my books at the bookstore 
and use a real human reader, yes the old fashioned way of a reader.
Yes, my school, Marymount University, had a dss office in case you're 
wondering.
But, I found them to be slow in procuring the accessible electronic texts. 
So, I used readers so not to fall behind.
And, even when I got electronic books from dss who got them from the 
publisher, I found some pdfs rather unreadable since Jaws read them with 
words stuck together.

I've gone back to school taking electives off and on through the years; even 
now I find that Learning Ally and bookshare do not have the texts I needed; 
not even when I took a public relations and  journalism class to further my 
writing skills. I found older editions of the text through Learning Ally, 
but with some differences and updated info in some chapters, I did use a 
reader as well.

While my dss office did require the proof of purchase and so does my 
community college now, they never scanned my personal copy. Instead, they 
got the electronic file from the publisher for me or used an online library 
universities can use called Access Text.
I'm actually glad they never took my books and scanned them. If they did, 
they would have had to cut the binding for scanning and I then could not 
sell to the bookstore.

Its good that students have it easier now. However, I still think using 
readers is a skill worth having. Its helped me a lot for research because as 
we all know the library has a huge print collection we cannot otherwise 
access but with  a reader.
I often wanted to read more than I could for the papers though if the 
subject was of interest. However, given readers can only read a few hours at 
a time and I did not have endless hours to spend with them, we had to be 
quite selective in what they read; often we would read exerpts of a chapter 
and I found books with headings were so helpful and they then can read the 
headings to me coupled with skimming. Then we could decide what to read 
together. I was also fortunate to be able to afford to pay them; the state 
vr agency can pay readers, but its only minimum wage and I felt this amount 
was too low for a reader.

Ashley


-----Original Message----- 
From: Anya Fuller via NABS-L
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 2:11 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Cc: Anya Fuller
Subject: Re: [NABS-L] Proof of Purchase

Hello,
in college I was lucky enough to find most of my books on Bookshare
and other similar sites. Sometimes my professors had extra copies of
their books and they just gave them to DSS for scanning at no charge.
I understand it is not a standard practice, and I was just lucky that
way, but it really helped.
Also, if your DSS office has already provided you with the accessible
books, and all they want you to do is to show them the proof of
purchase, you should do what a number of people have advised; buy
those books and return them as soon as the DSS sees your receits.
Have a great semester!

On 1/16/18, roanna bacchus via NABS-L <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
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