[VABS] Nova

Naim Abu-ElHawa nmabuelhawa at gmail.com
Fri Jul 21 00:28:33 UTC 2017


As a student, BookShare membership is free of charge. Otherwise, your first year's membership is $75, $50 is the annual fee thereafter. The reason the first year's fee is $75 is because of the initiation/activation fee, I believe. But every year thereafter, members are charged $50 annually. This is my understanding, of course.

www.bookshare.org


Many Thanks And Much Respect.

Sincerely,



Naim Muawia Abu-El Hawa

Student: Northern Virginia Community College.
Member: Virginia Association of Blind Students.
Member: National Association of Blind Students.
Member: National Federation of the Blind.

Email Address: nmabuelhawa at gmail.com

Cell Phone Number: (202) 848-8932

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow."
Robert H. Goddard

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 20, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ashley Bramlett via VABS <vabs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Michael,
> 
> I do not know about Virginia tech and I know of no blind students currently there.
> I cannot confirm what they do but if they provide braille for any textbook requested, I wonder where they get the money for it as this would have to be outsourced to a braille contractor and its real expensive. Unless its math or science, personally, I think braille books are impractical in college. The books would be perhaps 25 volumes of braille and you only need them for the 16 weeks of the semester. If you had say four classes with 25 volumes of braille per book, storing the books would be impossible as that's 100 volumes.
> 
> Yes I'm a braille reader. I learned this after large print so it was probably fourth or fifth grade before I was fast and fluent in my braille reading skills.
> I'm not as good with audio and it was a struggle particularly in more fact based classes such as my history ones to use audio books when I went to college.
> I'm low vision, but still like Niam I was in Fairfax county in public school.  I was provided my books in braille or for math in large print.
> A few books came late, but that was the exception, not the norm.
> 
> At college, some schools will provide braille more readily than others. Perhaps VT somehow does it. Interesting.
> 
> It is not a law that colleges provide you books in braille. They are required to provide you equal access to the material other students get.
> They have to provide reasonable accomodations which gives you access to the materials of your class.
> They are not required to provide you the prefered accomodation.
> The laws covering post secondary education are The Americans with disabilities act, title III, I think, and section 504 of the rehab act.
> 
> I liked the days of studying with braille hard copy because it was easier and I could use reading techniques like my sighted peers were doing such as skimming for words, searching for the headings of sections, flipping ahead in the chapter to see what was next and my most important use of braille was seeing the spelling of words such as proper nouns.
> 
> So, my point is that braille is a good way to access your books but you will likely not get this in college provided by your disability office.
> If you do extra work and are a member of NLS and bookshare though, you can provide yourself some braille formats.
> 
> If you are fortunate to have a braille display or notetaker with a display, you may be able to read your texts on your display hooked up to your pc or laptop though assuming you have electronic texts provided from your disability office.
> Another way for you, but not your school, to provide yourself braille in post secoondary education is to use bookshare. Bookshare is an online library of scanned books and textbooks in accessible electronic text. You will have to pay for this though, I believe.
> There is an annual fee for it. Once you are a member, you can access its library of nearly a million books.
> The books are provided in many electronic formats. One format is .brf. BRF is a braille file format that is conducive to reading via your braille display.
> Other formats are daisy text, pdf, and a format you can read online.
> 
> Another source of both electronic braille and hard copy braille is the NLS braille books. In virginia, you can receive them from the Richmond library; the library and resource center, LRC, is next to the state rehab center.
> LRC can send you books in the mail. But, if you want electronic braille and have a display, you can simply download the brf format off the Bard website.
> NLS does not supply textbooks. However, you can get other books from them such as classic novels, sacred texts, and some humanities books for research.
> For instance, they might assign you to read A Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gadsby or To Kill a Mockingbird in your english class.
> You can obtain them in braille.
> If you need to research famous people for a history class, you might find book sources in braille too. For instance, when I researched Queen Victoria and Woodrow Wilson, I got something in braille.
> If you need to cite page numbers though, you will not have this in the braille copy. However, if you are using APA or a citation style which needs no pages, this works as a source.
> 
> Finally, if you need books that are not copyrighted anymore due to their age, you might find them online. These online sources in html are readable with a screen reader or your braille display. So I did not have to be connected to my computer to read with my braille Note, I copied the text to a file, saved it to a USB drive, and then put the drive in my notetaker.
> A source of online books is Project Gutenberg. You can find it at
> www.gutenberg.org.
> 
> 
> Thanks for writing Michael. Sorry to deliver some disappointing news about your right to receive braille in college.
> 
> Nova will provide braille tests though with enough notice.
> 
> Ashley
> -----Original Message----- From: Michael Munn via VABS
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 12:11 AM
> To: Virginia Association of Blind Students list
> Cc: Michael Munn
> Subject: Re: [VABS] Nova
> 
> Hi Ashley, are you a braille reader? I am ask you that because they should
> have the book in braille as well. This is a law  that nova have to follow.
> You should not change your preferred   learning style just because Nova
> does not have the book  you need. Maybe you should tell them to emboss your
> book in braille. As far I know that VT Virginia tech  they do braille  for
> students who live in the State of Virginia.  Is long you have the hard copy
> of your material.   This is where I got my 4H materials from. The people
> who is in charge of the  braille department her name is Christa Miller.  I
> will send you her email. Just let you know that
> VT Virginia tech they do things very slow so I suggest that you should
> request your book in braille  before next semester. If you are a braille
> reader you'll find that information helpful.
> Take  care
> Warmly Michael Munn
> I
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