Hi Jess,
This is a serious issue, one that absolutely cannot be managed from a
faction standpoint. Anyone who has issues managing regular print, and
indeed those with learning disabilities use screen reading technology,
will be ousted if the trend continues.
I collect print books, and use my still very practical scanner, but its a
stand alone model allowing me to flawless transfer its contents into
electronic form.
However as a researcher I like students use vast qualities of academic
material.
If text books are becoming available electronically then the best place
to start is the place that approves these books for schools, that is the
department of education, in your state and at the federal level. Again
the issue is access, period, not by consumers with vision loss, or a
reading disability or any other tool that makes managing a book an issue.
It is for *all* students in this arena to have materials accessible at the
same level of everyone else.
a petition in my view is not necessarily a good start, anyone can do that
same as with facebook or twitter.
instead start with a real person, your congressperson senator, those who
sit on education committees that govern what a publisher must do for their
book to be used in classrooms.
and of course press, general public press not faction press. You do not
need to preach to the choir, you need to educate those who might not
consider this issue on their own.
If you want, write me privately and I can see if I can connect you with a
reporter for the story. No promises, but I should know someone down
there.
Karen
On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Jess wrote:
Thanks to everyone that has responded so far to my post.
For those people who suggest that we just scan our books, call me a breaker of
the old tradition, but scanners are just not practical anymore. More and more
books are going to be on the electronic internet, and I think that a good start
is for us to get a following. We should post about this issue on blogs,
twitter, and anywhere people will listen to us.
I appreciate those that feel I have a valid complaint, and I think that all of
us who really care about this should contact the publishers to discuss this
with them.
I completely forgot about other print-disabled people sharing my concerns, but
that just makes my case all the stronger.
On Feb 1, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Carolyn wrote:
Jes:
I'm not currently a student, but you have a vallid complaint. I wound up
scanning a print textbook for a friend of mine after he purchased the e-book
and found it inaccessible for the reasons you state.
I'm not sure where one would start, but I would think about consulting disabled
student services at your school, and also contact the NFB in Maryland to check
out whether anyone there is addressing this issue.
HTH
Carolyn
----- Original Message -----
From: Jess
To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 5:49 AM
Subject: A call to action!
First, a question.
How many people like to read books? I know I do. How many people were overjoyed
that entire text books were going to be put online? I was. However, a lot of
EBooks cannot be read by any screen reader we have today. Why? Simply put, the
text of the book is contained within an OCR image, and there is a special
reader required to read them. These are not your standard PDF files, and the
books are protected by DRM, so there is no way to extract the contents into
programs like text edit.
As a book worm, I tried out the Kindle app for the IPhone, and was delighted to
find that a book that I wanted to read was available on the Kindle store.
However, my joy turned to bitter disappointment when I realized that while I
could navigate the book's table of contents, cover, and chapters to an extent,
the text was completely inaccessible. Furthermore, my text books for my classes
were not usable. Ladies and gentlemen, I fear that unless we as blind consumers
stand up, and demand that these publishers put their text books into standard
native file formats, such as pdf or doc, we will lose a lot of access to books,
and our chances to succeed at college will be severely diminished. So, anyone
have any thoughts of what to do?
I thought about starting a petition to ask Amazon to require their publishers
to make their books usable, but figured that I would be a laughing stock for
doing so, as most publishers probably wouldn't have the time to read, much less
consider what I was asking for.
My point is, as long as E texts get more and more graphical, our chances to
read will be greatly impaired, and as more and more books become exclusively
online, we will lose access to the latest editions of books altogether.
Thoughts, anyone?
You may also skype me at pianomagic88
Jes
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
