What I did on my summer holidays.

Mon Jan 28 10:34:01 EST 2002

Wow you were the best possible case for receiving the sort of
accomodations that all of us should have and would really appreciate.

I had to accept Incomplete grades when I was in college because 1) no
textbook was available on recorded tape/forget about etext or braille;  2)
no human was calling for the "help wanted for readers" notices I had
placed on every campus bulletin board, etc.  3) I had nothing like an OCR
scanner/software for converting texts to some accessible form.

I know that if I could be attending college in the U.S. nowadays, that
there is much more that is available and accessible so we indeed have come
a loong! way and this is wonderful.

I commend the efforts of the Daisy Project and others.  We obviously still
have more to overcome such as .pdf issues and to obtain appropriate
cooperation from publishers and the like.
Still, we are so fortuneate to be around in this time to be able to avail
ourselves of what has evolved

One good example is how Oreilly Books is so cooperative with providing
their books to persons who are blind and free of charge.  Personally, I
would not mind paying the same price for books as my print-enabled
counterparts but this does open doors to information to persons who could
not afford these materials and who further cannot use a typical library
because all of those books are in print and not readily accessible.

Hang-in there Satik, access to information in an Accessible form is
improving.

Amanda Lee
Alexandria, VA

On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Thomas Ward wrote:

> Good Lord! I am glad I live in America. My college was thankfully nice
> enough to scan, edit, and provide all my college texts in etext format if
> they could not be obtained directly from the publishers.
> Then, we have RFBND which does help, but often it doesn't get the materials
> on hand fast enough.
> It sounds like Daisy books  is going to be a God send for you guys.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Saqib Shaikh <ss at saqibshaikh.com>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 9:50 PM
> Subject: Re: What I did on my summer holidays.
>
>
> > Hi Janina,
> >
> > I was really happy to hear that we'll be getting Daisy books in the
> spring!
> >
> > What you say about "getting permission from the publishers" hits home
> right
> > enough. While this law is on the verge of changing here in the UK it
> means:
> > 1. Books are rediculously out of date. The most recent braille title on
> > computing we have is the MS-DOS 5.0 users manual!
> > 2. Tapes are also out of date. I wanted a Tanenbaum book for my hardware
> > course (something like 5th editicion 2001). 4th edition would have been ok
> > but I got 1st edition, 1978. Three years before I was born! So I got to
> > learn about how computers were long before I was thought of <grin>
> > 3. We're also excluded from the US National Braille Library's ebraille
> > initiative and also the bookshare project.
> > 4. To finish off my ranting I did the following research a year and a half
> > ago before I started my degree. Following the findings I have given up on
> > books in special formats and just have a humna reader.
> > Findings:
> > I was told that a thousand page computer science text would take approx
> 1.5
> > years to put onto tape. Approx 3-5 years to put into braille.
> > A braille/taping centre at a nearby university offered to do the job until
> > they realised that nobody knew anything about squiggly brackets etc and
> sad
> > no can do. Finally, I looked into putting a book into braille privately
> from
> > two different sources. Both stated that they would charge approx £30 or
> $50
> > per hour, making a grand total of 10 thousand pounds approx fifteen
> thousand
> > dollars.
> >
> > I'll leave you with that thought.
> >
> > Saqib
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Janina Sajka" <janina at afb.net>
> > To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> > Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 2:29 AM
> > Subject: Re: What I did on my summer holidays.
> >
> >
> > > I think Kirk got it about right below. Especially the part about
> "summer,"
> > > because it was certainly unseasonally warm in Toronto last week! <grin>
> > >
> > > One note about the 15/16 ips, four-track cassettes as specialized media.
> > > This format was defined explicitly as a specialized format for blind
> users
> > > of specially produced content. One can think of this format as a kind of
> > > analog tape intellectual property protection scheme. We can hope and
> dream
> > > of a day when we don't need such things, but we need them now if we're
> > > going to have access to large quantities of published books in a
> > > format/medium that really works for us.
> > >
> > > I should note that many countries are jealous of the U.S.' Chafee
> > > Amendement. In most other countries (though not all), organizations
> > > producing braille or audio (and soon the DAISY format) need to get
> > > permission in writing from copyright holders before they can begin to
> > > produce a title. This takes a lot of time, and, of course, producing
> > > titles takes a lot of time to. One side benefit of the Chafee Amendment
> > > means that titles can be made available much more quickly than before.
> > >
> > > The goal, of course, is to get as many titles produced in the DAISY
> format
> > > as quickly as possible, and to get them into users' hands as quickly as
> > > possible. Another goal is to give users a wide range of choices in the
> > > technology they use to "read" this content. There are already some
> > > hardware devices that 'play" DAISY titles--and there will be more. There
> > > are also software players already--and there will be many more of these,
> > > on all the OS used by us.
> > >
> > > So, I am very glad that Kirk was with us last week. The Digital Talking
> > > Book technology is going to be very important to our community, and we
> > > need the widest range of experience and viewpoint in getting the basics
> > > right so that anyone and everyone who qualifies can participate.
> > >
> > > PS: If you live in the U.K., you will have the option of titles in DAISY
> > > late this spring. Here in the States, we'll have to wait a bit longer.
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > Janina Sajka, Director
> > > Technology Research and Development
> > > Governmental Relations Group
> > > American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
> > >
> > > Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
> > >
> > > Chair, Accessibility SIG
> > > Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
> > > http://www.openebook.org
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
>
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