Congratulations.. I am completely blind and have done several degrees culminating in a PhD this year so it is perfectly possible to get successfully through these.
Increasingly the Amazon Kindle Library is providing access to many Text books which will be accessible on your phone if not your Mac. This is an important resource though luckily for History students there is also a lot of historical texts which are available freely in the public domain through Gutenberg and Internet File Archive. Nevertheless a good scanning solution is essential as even in History it is inevitable that much material will only be available in print format. In the end I used to use a support worker to go and scan whatever book I needed using and EyePal portable scanner attached to her laptop. She then uploaded the jpg page image files in a zip file to sendspace and after I downloaded them I found that I got good results using Abbey Finereader to convert the documents rather than use the default EyePal software on my Mac. I used Finereader on Windows but see no reason why it should not do as well on the Mac. This meant I did not waste time going to libraries where I could not read books and could get on with something else. The British Library in particular were very supportive of this arrangement. You will need DSA support for this. Unfortunately the disadvantage of this approach is that on occasions you will not get good scanning results. If a book is absolutely critical it may be better to read as you scan at home as you can rescan in the event that gibberish is the outcome of the scan. Try and get agreement that page references can be substituted by location references if your material is in electronic format. If a text document is in plain text and does not have embedded page numbers for references I used the page number generated by Word using Normal.dot format. You may have to do something similar with numbers generated by pages. The new ability of Pages to read tables on the Mac increases the feasibility of using the Mac for serious study. Abby Finereader is the best engine I have found for scanning tables. I would still use TextEdit for reading long documents / books as you are not restricted to a page in say all mode. Adobe Digital editions is a possible solutions for ePub Books but hopefully iBooks on the Mac will improve soon. Remember that the VO command VO Shift C will Copy the last phrase spoken to clipboard so you can get accessible access to ePub books to check spelling of names etc. Remember that Google Scholar is your friend in trying to research subjects or follow lines of academic enquiry. Personally I found setting VO Punctuation to all whilst I am writing is necessary as otherwise I do not get sufficient feedback on errors such as multiple full stops... Also rather than experience frustration with the Blackboard system I recommend You encourage your lecturers to email class material to you in advance of lectures as a reasonable adjustment. Unless Blackboard has significantly improved since I used it, it is more hassle than it is worth for a blind student. It is partially accessible but as I say it is best to avoid if you can. Happy to give further advice if needed but this email will probably become too long. David Griffith -----Original Message----- From: mac-access-boun...@mac-access.net [mailto:mac-access-boun...@mac-access.net] On Behalf Of Ian Harrison Sent: 01 November 2013 14:36 To: Mac OSX & iOS Accessibility Subject: Starting a degree advice needed Dear listers, I am going to be starting history degree next year at the grand old age of 56. I never did a degree when younger and was hoping for some advice from those who have done one with a visual impairment. When it comes to reading and writingI consider myself totally blind and use voice over in the main, on my iphone and ipad mini, with a mac mini at home. Any help as to what I will need specifically for doing a degree would be greatly appreciated. Please contact me off list on m...@harrisonclan.karoo.co.uk Ian <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
