[blindkid] Need Advice on Scanner

[trising]

Hello, here are our recommendations. My husband has a degree in computer 
information systems and teaches access technology at our Library for the 
blind for ten hours per week. He earnestly wants full time work. I only tell 
you his qualifications to let you know that he has experience with these 
products. He teaches library patrons how to use Kurzweil on a regular basis.
    Open Book is more problematic. It is not updated as often. In Nick's 
opinion, Kurzweil 1000 is the best scanning software on the market. He 
completed his entire college degree by using Kurzweil to independently scan 
all of his books. Kurzweil is updated more often. Kurzweil lets you choose 
between two scanning engines. This can enhance the quality of the scan. 
Columns that are well defined work best with any scanner. If a page is 
crowded with material, or the columns are close together, or there is print 
above and below the columns, going all the way across the page, then any 
scanner is more likely to have trouble. A couple fixes for this include: 
having a sighted person cover up one column at a time, so that only one 
column is scanned at a time. The other alternative is to have a sighted 
assistant draw a line with a marker down the page between the columns. 
Somehow, this seems to help the scanner differentiate the columns. Sorry 
this post was long. I hope it helped.
Terri and Nick Wilcox