Unknown Speaker 10:26 Well, one want to get started for us. It's perfect. Right. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the first in a PVC national organization of parents of blind children are proud efficient at the National Federation Cline, our first fabulous Friday. Today we are kicking off, get caught reading month with sharing with you some resources for some free and accessible but for our blind children to Just in case you don't know, in the NFB National Federation of the Blind, we have a really broad definition of blindness. And we are very welcoming and have that big tent. Anytime that a child's vision inhibits the child from being able to at activities of daily living efficiently effectively and in an age appropriate manner. We would consider that child blind for the purposes of meeting non visual skills. And the kinds of books we're gonna be talking about today are available in Braille, audio and in large print. So they are again, big tent I welcoming, use the term blind. I'm Carlton and coke Walker, I serve as president of inner PVC. And joining me as co host on this call is Melissa Rika. Bono and I will choose the board members in our PC in 100. a whole heck of a lot more. So I'll ask Melissa to introduce herself. Unknown Speaker 12:05 Hello, my name is Melissa Rika Bono. I am a board member of the National Organization of parents of blind children. I prep my husband Mark Bono is also the president of the National Federation of the Blind. So I am the first lady of the National Federation of the Blind. I am blind myself. And I actually use both these services that we're going to talk about, and I have three children. Two of my children are blind, and they also are users of these services. So I'm really excited to be able to share these resources with you from a person who uses them and also from a parent's standpoint. Unknown Speaker 12:40 Fabulous. The two resources we're going to talk about most today are Bookshare and National Library Service. I take this time to just mention that there is another service called Learning Ally and we're not covering it today. And let me just tell you why. Number one Learning Ally is audio only are predominantly audio books. That's great, but it's not necessarily as accessible in terms of our broad form of accessibility. Audio is a great way to get input of content, but it's not reading and it's not doesn't not allow people to interact with the text. But again, there are times that Learning Ally splits are particularly great especially people find for technical subjects like science. of the the other reasons the berries and we're not going to delve into Learning Ally today is that it's number one not free for students not free typically, even during this pandemic time. It's not free for families, unless you ask for a fee waiver. So if your child child school has a Learning Ally account, it can. Your child can get books through that account. If your child's school, your child's school can actually get a free Learning Ally account through August But you can't, as the parent, little bit of a bummer. So you could definitely contact your child's school about that. But it's not something you can do. The only way you can is through a fee waiver application where you have to share your household income and just kind of personal information that you may or may not be comfortable with. No, that's true for the two resources we're concentrating on today. So Unknown Speaker 14:24 that's where we are Unknown Speaker 14:26 a Melissa and I would say that, especially with Bookshare, they have many more titles and Learning Ally does so not only are they free, but they're a little bit better in that way. Unknown Speaker 14:37 So yeah, absolutely. And what a beautiful segue to thank you. Unknown Speaker 14:46 But share is a service that provides accessible books to qualifying individuals. We'll talk about that qualification in a second. These are a wide range of titles that can be early childhood books, they can be early to bullets. They also are novels and even include text bullets, in some ways, or to, to some degree, we'll talk about that in a second. But just why we're going to talk but science fiction, science fiction, just lots of different choices in between. As of this morning, Bookshare reported that it offered 849,864 titles from which to choose. Stunning number. I consider Bookshare something akin to a library that our children can actually get books from that are useful to them. So boom. With regard to who can join, what does that qualify individual thing, okay? What it means is that a person has to have a visual impairment which includes blindness, or learning disability that affects reading or another physical disability. That causes what's called print disability. In other words, a person cannot turn pages that would be a print disability. And in order to join but share the individual must be certified as having that disability or must, either in your Bookshare application or in an application to another entity like National Library Service, then you can get put share easily. This sounds pretty darn good 800 more than 100,000 tiles, how much does it cost? Well, it's pretty darn reasonably reasonably priced. In fact for students, K through 12, and post secondary students and rehabilitation students. It's free in the US, these are us students. This is because the Office of Special Education Programs within the United States Department of Education has given Bookshare Grant, and that grant pays for the students. So it's completely free for them. If a person's no longer a student, then it's a $50 per year annual fee. And that's, that's less than $1 a month. It the fee but it's pretty darn low fee. Unknown Speaker 17:20 Melissa, do you want to jump in? Unknown Speaker 17:25 Well, I mean, I will talk about I mean, it's all the things that Carlton has said has been wonderful. Um, Bookshare is definitely has gotten definitely gotten a lot better in the years that it's been in existence. When book share first started, it was completely, it was a company, but the books that they got, were all submitted by volunteers who scan to the books and then people that would look at the books, make sure that they were at least somewhat of a good quality scan. And then put them up on Bookshare. Now publishers actually have deals with Bookshare. And so a lot of the bestsellers, a lot of different books that are very popular books Bookshare gets them very quickly. And they're also files directly from the publisher. So it's kind of interesting, the files that you get some of them if you're looking for older books, you might see that maybe it has a rating that says, you know, fair quality or good quality. And you might get some strange errors because they were scanned. My daughter is actually reading a book, an American Girl book from Bookshare on her phone right now with her Braille display, and I'm following along in a hardcopy Braille book and there are a few errors in there, which doesn't make the reading experience perfect, but for the most part, it's all completely readable text and since we're lucky enough to have the Braille copy on Well, we're not really running into problems because I can say, Oh, that's supposed to be this word. So just just know that that it is a fantastic service. It is free for students, I would definitely say sign up for it. I mean, otherwise I wouldn't be participating in the seminar. But just be aware that especially if you're looking at books that are a little bit older, that they might have, they might be scanned copies. And so there may be a few minor errors, or, you know, some might be worse than that. I'm sure you can report them. And I'm assuming that people have reported books and that they've gotten out of there and probably have gotten them in a newer, better file format, because it's just getting better and better all the time. So that was that's the only thing that I would add. Do want me to go on Carlton about how you sign up for how you Unknown Speaker 19:50 would let me add on to what you were going to do note that my child also one child has been noticing actually that some of the books Some of these, this wealth of new titles, especially when it comes to science, and math, are not perfect. Sometimes, some Bookshare books have images. Most of the downloads that are not a specific kind of file we'll talk about in a second called Daisy with images. They didn't even reference the images and like, you can download Bookshare files as Word files. And if they don't even have a reference that there was an image there, that you're missing an image. That's pretty frustrating. columns can be difficult. Sometimes columns are rendered well, and and like Melissa said, this is from the publisher. But unfortunately, sometimes the publishers don't format things in as accessible manners, others do. So when it comes to math and science Bookshare book it's absolutely better. And nothing and it gets a good story. But it is not necessarily the ending point. If you have a student in K through 12, who has an IEP, for instance, you would definitely want to have a professionally transcribed textbook is, especially again in math and science areas, I think also social studies because frankly, they're graphs and charts and such. So, that is really important. And as we're talking about this, even in English, it is important to have hardcopy Braille too, because even a refreshable Braille display if you can't just count down to paragraphs on page 49. The second paragraph when you're maybe you're reading in class or something. The hardcopy Braille is really important also for text features like an index, a easily findable index or something. It's not as refreshable Braille is great. But hardcopy Braille is great too. And refreshable Braille only gives you one line at a time. Unlike print looking, I can look at a document on print, but I can see more than one line at a time. I can't do that with a refreshable Braille display. I can do that with a hardcopy Braille page. So hardcopy Braille is still has a big, big place. But again Bookshare is it's it's not just better than nothing, it's good. But it's not the be all end all. Unknown Speaker 22:40 It. That's right. And that's I guess what we want to just you know, that's that's kind of why I was saying and especially at these times when just getting any books in the hands of your eager readers, or you're not so eager is really important because they really do need to be reading that's really the best way and I keep telling both my girls are dual media learners so they're they read print And Braille. And both of them are kind of saying, but I'm slow at Braille and their dad and I keep saying that the best way to get better is to practice. And so finding those really motivating books right away that they can download and just have access to allowing them to search for books themselves. All of those things are so important and that's really why we're bringing this to you. And Bookshare also does have if you happen to be lucky enough to have a Braille embosser you can actually emboss the Bookshare file some of them right at your own home so you can have that hardcopy Braille so it does kind of give you the ability to do the best of both worlds. So that's all I'll say about that. I'm sure that Carlton is going to move on now to the most of you get this wonderful service. Unknown Speaker 23:50 Oh, okay. Yeah, go. Unknown Speaker 23:53 There I can is either way. Unknown Speaker 23:56 No, no, it's fine. I just want to eat Unknown Speaker 23:59 if you were just Doing if you're if your student is a college student, or a rehab student, or if you are college and rehab scene, you can do put share an individual membership all by yourself, life is happy for K through 12 students, they actually have more choices, but they can make a teeny little bit more complicated. All every student K through 12, rehab, college, post secondary, whatever post secondary course has the right to an individual book share account. That means a bit but share account that has their own email, their own password and that they can download what they want when they want. To be sure but share has an automatic lock on certain titles for those that are not yet 18 years old, so you don't have to worry about that they get anything they want. There are controls for minors, but K through 12 students and to a certain extent others but it's mainly important for K through 12. There's something called an institutional account. In other words, your school or school district can have an account for your chop before that K through 12 students, that's a good thing. Because there are some special files. They're called nine Mac files. And they refer to certain textbooks that are only available to students in K through 12. Through a federal program, not backed by mass, and only school institutions can download them. So no individual any individual account can download them, no matter what individual credit you have. So the IP, but the institutional account can and that's great. But if the student only has an institutional account, he or she can't download books independently, like Melissa was talking about, say, Oh, my friend was just talking about a call the call of the wild I wouldn't download it. Well, you have to call up your teacher and say, Hey, would you do this and it It's great if they can just do it themselves when you have that energy want to keep going that energy. So students need to have both the institutional and the individual Unknown Speaker 26:13 ones are better than the other, they're both really necessary. Unknown Speaker 26:18 And there, if you already have an institution account, this additional account, there is a fairly easy way to just add on an individual account. If you don't, that's okay too, because it's there's a very easy application process for Bookshare. And from what I understand Bookshare is doing a really good job of adding people in through this pandemic. I'm guessing that people work from home and it's the documents ideally, are electronic so we can share them quickly and safely. Now, you will need a certifying authority and we can talk about that later. But It's not that big a deal we have, we have resource for you to do that. So it really can be easy. There's no application fee for students or anything. So it's worth a shot. And Unknown Speaker 27:15 then we'll talk about later how you can Unknown Speaker 27:20 download the different kinds of formats most and I've referred to a couple of them. But there are a lot of different formats or a lot of ways to read the booklet. So it's worth a shot. Unknown Speaker 27:33 Yes, it definitely is. And I would say to that, as far as being certified, I'm guessing if your child has an institutional membership already, you might check with your school, because it makes it easier and I would assume that they might not need that certifying authority anymore because they already had it through their school. Unknown Speaker 27:53 Right. Like I said, if a child that already has an institutional authority institutional account, there's it's in a document, we'll be sharing it the End of the seminar this webinar, that there's a really there's they even have an instructional video, we have the instructions in the document. It's really easy, you just kind of do an add on to that institutional login, so you don't need anything else. But if your child doesn't have that, or your child, your child doesn't already have a book share login, we can help you out too with an individual membership allocation. Absolutely. Unknown Speaker 28:32 So should we go a little bit into how to read the books up? Yes. Or do you want to do the different formats first? Unknown Speaker 28:40 Well, yeah, I can talk about the different formats. There's an E pub format. There's Daisy, and there's Daisy with and without images, and they can be read by different types of each of these can be read by different types of tools, hardware and or software. We also Have BRF most of reference that that's impossible ready for a hard copy print embosser. But it's also ready for refreshable braille displays. That's kind of cool. There are also mp3. So obviously that's just audio. But that is one format. There is Daisy audio, which is similar to mp3. I'm sure the techie people know the difference. I don't, but they're both audio only. And then it's fairly new. They have word that I like, actually, as a teacher of blind students. I'm also a parent of blind child. I'm a teacher of blind students. And I do like word for some things. And word also allows me to see what the word one but I can do is I can go in, get a word and then I can download the same title in a daisy with images. So you said why on earth and why would you want to do it down with the same book twice. Let me tell you I can take those images from the daisy with images, paste them into the word file and add what we call alt text, a description of that graphic. So now I've made a more it accessible document for my students, and I know what the help test is, I know it's good all tests, I know there is all test. I can clean up if there are any column issues. So it is nice for me to be able to do that. And some are more navigable than others. navigation is really important. My my blind talents complained about some navigation in some of the more recent textbooks especially. So I can add navigation in the Word document. Now there are other people who are more techie, can do epubs and daisies the same kind of way I I'm a word kind of girl. So that those are the Unknown Speaker 30:57 format's and Unknown Speaker 31:01 Each of those, like I said, has different ways of reading it. Their butcher has its own way of reading it. It's called book share web reader. It's free once you search for a book. Many, many, many of them are available with their Bookshare web reader. Biggest, negative well, but sure, web reader is definitely geared toward visual readers, but it can be read. I don't know how well it does for refreshable Braille, I just haven't tried it because it has a big negative. A big drawback though. I haven't bothered. You must be online. You can't when you open the book, your online fabulous. If you get offline while you're in the middle of the book, stops reading stops me accessible completely. You can't do anything in the book dies. So not everybody has internet. Not everybody has stable internet. So I don't really use the Bookshare web reader much But it's a it's an auction. Now Melissa Do you want to talk about some different ways to read some of the others and I'll just fill in? Unknown Speaker 32:09 Sure, definitely. So the ones that I really prefer and I and just going back to Daisy audio for a minute I think the difference is I believe that Daisy audio actually has navigation built into it. So if you're using a player I'm guessing like a National Library Service player or a victor reader stream or some other players that you can actually navigate by headings or chapters or things like that. That's what I'm guessing that the the audio is just knowing what Daisy is I could be wrong but that's my guess. Unknown Speaker 32:39 That's their description. It does talk about fit to reader screens and read to go apps. So I think you're right right. So Unknown Speaker 32:46 that's probably what it is. And actually, that's funny. I was going to talk about Victor reader stream and also about Voice Dream Reader and the read to go app. So Victor reader stream is nice, or the or the National Library Service. We'll talk about in a minute. But if your child is already a National Library Service Library for the Blind member, and they have a free book player, you can load you should be able to load I believe Daisy audio files onto a thumb drive and you could read in audio on that player, Victor reader stream is the same thing you can actually search and download. But again, it's all audio and audio is great. But as Carlson points out, it's not how you're going to get reading fast. And again, this is going to be synthesized speech. So it's not going to be as enjoyable to listen to. I mean, certainly if it's a book that you really, really want to read, and you know, you want to read in the car or something where you can't have a Braille display because the battery died or something crazy. It's it's good and you can do it that way. The way that I generally read Bookshare books is on my phone. I really like the Voice Dream Reader app. It is a really Nice app that has the ability to be integrated with Bookshare. And so you can just when you you, look, you want to open a new document, basically. And it says, Where do you want to open this from? Do you want to look in Bookshare? Do you want to look, you can actually hook it to your Dropbox account. I mean, there's all sorts of things that Voice Dream Reader can actually read to you or allow you to read with a refreshable Braille display as well. And so it's nice though, because it's connected right to Bookshare. You put your login information in there, it searches Bookshare, you can just download it right from that app. And then you can read right from the app, you can either do it in audio, or if you turn your speech off on your device and just have your Braille display you can read on your Braille display. So that's really the app that I like to read to go is another Bookshare app. And I like it except that voice stream is free, and it does a little bit more read to go I think there's 1999 and if I'm remembering Right, and maybe they fix this, but I don't think it has family sharing. So for our household where my husband's blind, I'm blind, my two daughters are blind, we would have to buy that read to go app for all of our different devices. And I mean, you know, I just would rather not do that. And we could we could afford it, I guess. But I would much rather have something that's free but read to go is certainly another option. I believe that some of the Braille note takers actually have a built in reader for Bookshare. I don't know for sure how true that is. anymore. I knew it used to be true with the old Braille notes are the M powers and things like that. Now with the Braille note touch in the new ones, I think you have to download an app to read it. And there might be one more app that's a go read, I think is the other one that maybe is the other name for reads ago, or maybe it's a more basic version of read to go. That's free Android. So that's the other one. Oh, that's the Android version. That's right for Google for Got the Google Store. So that's like a real nice touch. I personally my daughter had a Braille note touch for a while I really was much happier once we were able to Bluetooth that to an iOS device and iPad and iPhone, iPad iPod. I really did not like how Unknown Speaker 36:17 tough it was to Unknown Speaker 36:19 get Bookshare. I just found it really kind of cumbersome to get Bookshare files into the Braille note in a good way that we could use them quickly and easily in search. And so it might just be user error for sure. And now there's a newer version of the Braille note. But she had the older one so I don't know and I'm not as familiar with him his prod products, I don't know for sure what other ones are doing but any refreshable Braille display hooked up to a computer or to a tablet or to a phone could do voice stream or read to go or go read. That would be certainly an option for any of those Yeah, I just want to say and I'm hoarse Braille Victor reader stream for audio, right? Unknown Speaker 37:07 The Voice stream reader isn't free though. There is there is a fee for it, both in app birth in Google Store and in iTunes. It's $10. Unknown Speaker 37:18 Oh, that's interesting. It used to be free. So that's bad. But it's, it's well worth, it's worth the well worth the cost. Absolutely. Especially if your child is going to be doing other things as they get older. with Dropbox Word document. I mean, you can just you can read any type of document and what I like about voice stream is it actually keeps your place. And so I used to get my church bulletin emailed to me. But then if my Braille display turned off because I wasn't reading, then I was always at the top of my email and I had to get back to where the bulletin was with voice stream. I could shut off my Braille display and then I could resume you know, once the sermon was over, or whatever, and I lost Just starting off, I was able to resume right there where I left off. So that's the other really nice thing about waste stream. It just takes a lot more files and is a really nice app. Unknown Speaker 38:09 Absolutely, I definitely believe that voice stream is well worth, well Well, well, well well worth the $10. And if family has trouble perhaps get some help locally up, you know, iTunes cards, a lot of bolts give out iTunes cards. So those are used for voice stream reader and it is a really powerful and versatile tool. So it definitely is worth learning about and using some other things you can do. While we talk. I think we talked about BRF or refreshable Braille and displays in bosses word like if you did the word file, you could use Voice Dream Reader for it. You could also use jaws on a Windows laptop, or NVDA non visual digital access jaws is right now free until June 30. It is not free after that. It's somewhat expensive. If your child is in school or has a rehab program that could be planned that could be part of that. In PDF NVDA is not is at no cost, though. Also, you have voiceover with your iOS devices. So those could read the word but again, so good Voice Dream Reader, so boom. So there are different ways to access these books. And when you're wanting to download a book, you have the choice. Now not every book has, for instance, ABC with images a lot don't have images. It's fine because they take forever to download but it's okay because you get a lot of images. But you can choose so you could download in a daisy and an E pub and a BRF and in a word and play with it and see what you love. You have that ability and you say all but Carlson. This is a free program. How are very inexpensive program if I have my own account? Transcribed by https://otter.ai