Books Online

Introduction

I’m guessing that there’s nothing like the freedom and autonomy of choosing and preparing your own class resources, rather than having to keep to standard texts. The internet is a great place to gather every kind of guide, chart, article or discussion paper you might ever need. This gives you the freedom to decide on what you’ll use in the classroom with the flexibility to delay a decision until the day before class if you need to. However, your blind or vision impaired student can find this brave new world leaves them in the dust.

Traditionally, if a student with a vision impairment wants a textbook, a novel, a book of poetry, they have to go to the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind’s library, or the Accessible Formats Production department. The further in advance this is done, the greater the chance of getting their material on time. This is because large print or braille production takes time and skill. When class rexources were more standardised, this process was comparatively straightforward.

Now that the choice of resources is almost limitless, the likelihood that those resources will be available in a format which the blind or vision impaired student can use, or that the AFP department can meet the burgeoning demand, is greatly reduced. Combine that with the freedom not to decided on a resource until the day before you introduce it to class and the chances are increasingly good that your blind or vision impaired students will not have anything to use at the time when it is required.

Just as the internet has become a happy hunting ground for you, so the same is becoming true for your students. This section contains links to some sources of online books (primarily novels, essays and poetry) which both you and your blind or vision impaired students can utilise.

Books for Free

The following sites are examples of books which are in the public domain. The sites are the work of many volunteers who donate hundreds of hours in order to scan and proof-read. This means that in some cases, small errors will remain in some books. However, these errors do not detract from context.

The International Electronic Braille Library

Part of the International Braille Research Centre, the International Electronic Braille Library boasts over one thousand braille titles – some of them quirky - ranging from Aesop to H G Wells. The advantage for users of braille is that this site has embosser-ready files which can be as easily printed in hard-copy as they can be simply read on a portable braille note taker.

To access the books, just click on the appropriate link from either the Braille Books By Author or Title indices. The downloaded files need then only be unzipped for use.

The Gutenberg Project

The first electronic book repository, this project has been in existence since 1971, well before the birth of the internet. Today, it boasts more than 100,000 titles including scholarly essays, philosophical texts, novels and poetry.

“The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.” (Michael Hart, Project Founder).

This is great news for students who are vision impaired or blind because they can have their books as plain ASCII text which can be read as easily on their PC as on their portable note taker, students who have enough usable vision can even download a Plucker version for reading on a Palm Pilot or a smart phone; and of course there is a range of books in audio formats.

Project Gutenberg is a large and complex site and there are many ways to search for the book you want. The following method gives access to books by title in all the formats in which that title is available. It is not recommended to search by author, because the site’s search engine will simply put you at the beginning of the list of authors who share your chosen author’s surname initial. For instance, if you type “William Shakespeare” into the appropriate field without also adding the title you want, you will be placed at the beginning of the “Esses” and you will then be forced to scroll all the way down to “Shakespeare”! Of course, if you specifically wish to see all the works by a given author, doing this will bring you a list of all that is available for download. You can then choose the format appropriate to your needs.

However, to search by title, do the following:

1. From the front page, select “advanced search”.
2. In the appropriate fields, type the name of your chosen title, along with the author if you wish. For instance, if you search for William Shakespeare’s Macbeth in this way, you’ll be met with eight results.
3. Now, select the one most appropriate to your needs. Be careful, as some of the books are translated into other languages, while others are only written in their native tongue.
4. The first English version of Macbeth, for instance, will land you in a page containing a table from which you can select a format.
5. Download your chosen book by right-clicking on the link and choosing “save target as”. If you simply click on the download link, the books will appear on your screen to be read online.
6. As in the case of Macbeth, you may find you encounter several links which appear to contain the same files. Some of the links you find under title specifically contain audio links. Have a browse and see what’s available. Of course, there are other ways to get to the titles you’re after. This is just to give you a start.

Pay Titles

Of course, not all books online are free. Any copyrighted material must be paid for. However, many of the ebooks which are so readily available to most readers are encrypted PDF files, which means that they cannot be read by any screen reader. In fact, there is no encrypted format, be it Microsoft’s .lit or .pb (Plucker) that a screen reader can access. However, Microsoft does offer a plug-in for its reader, to enable you to read encrypted books with a .lit extension, but this is rudimentary and will not offer the power of a screen reader. If it’s the only way you can read some books you really want, however, it’s better than nothing. From the MS Reader Download Page follow the instructions provided. A link to the plug-in can also be found on that page.

Kindle from Amazon

Some students with usable vision may be able to utilise a device such as the Kindle Reader which is a recent release from popular online store, Amazon. It has the advantage of allowing a user to connect directly to the internet without the use of a computer and presents text in a sharp and clear resolution, made to replicate paper. Besides books, content for the Kindle extends to some international newspapers and magazines, as well as a range of blogs. It’s a costly solution but may be useful for some students.

Audible

A subsidiary of Amazon, Audible has a large range of audio books, magazines, radio shows and entertainment available for purchase. These are also accessible through Apple’s ITunes and through Amazon itself.

Audible content is downloaded to your PC and played via Audible’s proprietary manager which you must also download. However, there is an increasing number of MP3 players and other devices which support Audible’s content. These include Freedom Scientific's Packmate and Humanware's Victor Reader Stream.  The BrailleNote is set to include this in the next upgrade scheduled for later in the year.

You can purchase the books for the stated price or use one of their listener plans which let you download one book or periodical per month for a much-reduced price. You can also choose the audio quality according to your taste and the requirements of your internet plan. Either way, it’s a great way to get your audio content. Just be aware that some content may not be available outside the US or UK.

National braille Press

Founded in 1927, this non-proffit braille, printing and publishing house based in the US last year produced some 15 million braille pages using translationand computer equipment. Purchased books can be downloaded instantly, or can be posted to you on CD or in hard copy braille if preferred. Like all online stores, you are required to sign up for a free account before purchasing. Just visit their Book store choose from either adults or children’s books, select the books of your choice in your chosen format and add them to your shopping cart in the usual manner.

Summary

The above sites are only a few examples of a growing list of online book sources. The advantage of all these sites is that they enable a user to download a book onto their hard drive. Not all online book sites allow this.

You may know of others. Just bear in mind that the available books need to be accessible to both you and your blind or vision impaired students.

Happy Reading!!