FW: USA: Online book-sharing service for the blind borrows a page from Napster

[Amanda Lee]

Or in Windblows, TextBridge comes free with some scanners and scanners are
cheapper than probably Janina's was ten years ago <smile!>  TextBridge
does not have the more user-oriented features found in a product such as
K1000 or Open book, but, if one is determined to convert printed materials
into an accessible form, it can be done at a fairly reasonable cost.

much the same, Janina has a good solution as well...

Amanda Lee



On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Janina Sajka wrote:

> Oh, I don't know, Gina. Maybe they could use a ten year old scanner, linux
> and sane and gocr, like I do.
>
>
> On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Georgina wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > Please see my message on the cost of producing these books.  To say that
> > someone with low income can recooperate some or all of their costs is got to
> > be missleading.
> >
> > As you already know my feelings on the cost of K1000 there's no need for me
> > to go into that but if someone can't afford a scanner and K1000 or even Open
> > Book Ruby, how are they going to recooperate some or all of the cost?
> >
> > Surely, corretcing is out of the question too?  Firstly, they'd have to go
> > and buy the book and then be able to compare words and other symbols on the
> > screen with that on the printed pages of the book.
> >
> > Furthermore, that's if they can afford to use Windows to use the above ocr
> > packages.  I understood that the image files were also required, thus only
> > Windows users might and I say might be the only ones to be able to submit
> > scanned material.  What is the required format?
> >
> > It'll be very interesting to see how many people will be in a position to
> > submit material to the project.
> >
> > Gena
> >
> >
> >
> > >Actually, the cost is $50 per year.  First year there is a $25 setup fee.
> > >But as stated, if you contribute by submitting books that you scan,
> > >correct errors and do what they call Publish to submit books already
> > >uploaded and/or do what is known as Basic Publish whereby you clean-up
> > >their database to reflect appropriate information about the entried
> > >therein, you earn fifty cents per title.  To download and correct a book,
> > >you earn $2.50.  Do ten of those per year, you earn half of your annual
> > >membership.
> > >
> > >So, there are ways that a person with limited income resources can benefit
> > >and still use the service.
> > >
> > >Amanda Lee
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >_______________________________________________
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> > >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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> >
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> >
>
> --
>
> 				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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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>