2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance

Seminars@Hadley Audiobooks, Apps and Assistance: A Library of Possibilities from the National Library Service

Presented by Caroline Ashby Chancey Fleet

Moderated by Tom Babinski

July 16, 2014

Tom Babinski Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Seminars @ Hadley. Today the title of our seminar is “Audio Books, Apps, and Assistance: A Library of Possibilities from the National Library Service.”

A couple of housekeeping chores: for those of you using access technology some of these following pieces of information may be useful. If you have a connected microphone press and hold the CTRL key to speak. You’ll hear a tone that indicates it’s your turn to speak. When you’re finished speaking please remember to release the microphone.

To type a message to the group press F8, type the text and then press the Enter key. Press F9, that’ll take you to the list of messages. You can arrow through them as you wish and the newest message appears at the bottom of the list. And please keep your typing related to the topic. I’ll be monitoring the typing here and can then relay the questions to the participants.

And we’re always interested in your feedback so when you leave the seminar today there’ll be a very brief survey, and we appreciate it if you can take time to look at that survey and answer the questions.

Today I want to welcome the participants of our seminar. We have three people from the Andrew Heiskelll Braille and Talking Book Library in New York City. First I want to introduce the Chief Librarian, that’s Caroline Ashby. Caroline oversees the distribution of the audio books and Braille materials to people who have visual impairments as well as physical disabilities. She does that on site via downloads and then through an extensive mailing operations to residents of New York City and Long Island.

Secondly we have with us Chancey Fleet. She’s the Library’s Assistive Technology Coordinator and she helps patrons with the National Library Service BARD and other literary resources. She also helps patrons to research, learn and use assistive technology by providing training for beginners, coordinating a team of volunteer peer

And lastly we have Jill Rothstein. She’s the Manager of Public Services and Outreach for the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. She has worked in the neighborhood system of the New York City Public Libraries for over nine years and has a background as a child’s librarian and as a member of the Committee Serving Children with Special Needs.

To begin with I’d like to ask Caroline to if she would tell us about who is eligible for the National Library Service and how do they sign up for it? Go ahead.

Caroline Ashby Great. So the National Library Service is a division of the Library of Congress, so this is a federal program that’s distributed to end users like yourselves through 56 network libraries around the country, of which we are one. And National Library Service services are the same throughout the country no matter where you live, and eligibility rules remain the same.

So folks who are eligible for this service are legally blind or they’re visually impaired to the extent that reading a large print book with your glasses on is uncomfortable or difficult; or you have a physical disability that prevents you from reading print. So that could be arthritis that makes it

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 3 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance difficult to turn pages, or Parkinson’s Disease, an amputation, dexterity issues in your hands or wrists – anything that might make it difficult to hold or turn the pages of a book or read comfortably.

And then the fourth way to qualify for our service is to have a reading disability that’s organically based, so a lot of people with dyslexia qualify that way. That type of eligibility needs to be certified by a doctor of medicine but all of the others can be certified by any professional who’s familiar with your condition – that could be a doctor, a social worker, a nurse, a director of therapeutic recreation if you live in an assisted living or rehab center. It could be your local librarian at your public library – just anyone who can make the judgment call that you’re not able to read standard print.

And we really, really want to stress that you do not need to be legally blind to use this service, that most, the vast majority of our patrons are visually impaired and they are transitioning to talking books because large print is no longer comfortable for them.

I’m going to move on and talk a little bit about how you apply for our service. There are applications available online and you sign up at the Library of Congress website, which is probably the easiest way since all of you are coming to us from different locations around the country. So the website is www.loc.gov/nls. And you can look for

If you’re looking to find out where your nearest library outpost is there’s a “Find a Library” link at the top right. So again, that’s the “Find a Library” link on the NLS website which is www.loc.gov/nls. And we can post all of these links I guess at the end of the program.

Do we have any questions so far or shall I keep going and talk about some of the materials that are available and the equipment we distribute?

Tom Babinski Does anyone have any questions? This would be a time to do it.

Mylie Yes, this is Mylie in California and perhaps you’ll be getting to this later, but I wondered what the difference is between what the state libraries do and what the NLS does.

Caroline Ashby Sure. Depending on what state you live in, NLS service is often delivered via the state library. So for example in upstate New York, out of the New York State Library there’s the New York State Talking Book and Braille Library. So in many cases this is the same exact service that’s provided by your state library. If you want to follow up and let us know what state you’re coming to us from we can go ahead and confirm that.

Caller With these services, are these the same talking book services that I would be getting in Canada? Because I am coming to you from Monkton in New Brunswick and I was just wondering if the services here in Canada resemble the ones in the States.

Caroline Ashby That’s a really good question and we’re all sort of looking at each other, not knowing how to answer it. But service in Canada is most certainly different. The National Library Service Talking Book Service is for US citizens. So we can certainly do some research and follow up with you about what’s available to you in Canada.

Darla My name is Darla Cook and I’m from Oklahoma.

Tom Babinski Go ahead, Darla, with your question.

Darla I was trying to find out, I lost my password for BARD and so I had it taped and anyway, the recorder broke, the tape broke so how do I get it back?

Caroline Ashby We’re going to talk a lot more about BARD as we move along into what products are available and what talking books are available, but if you go to the BARD website there’s a link there for “Forgot your password” and you can reset it there; or call us or call your local NLS network library and they can talk you through it. So we can certainly get back to you.

Tom Babinski We’ll be taking some more questions in a moment but Caroline, would you like to go ahead and tell us about some more aspects of the National Library Service?

Caroline Ashby Great, yeah. So the great thing about the National Library Service offerings is that they’re available to you in multiple different ways. So for those of you who don’t have internet access at home, although I guess all of you do since you’re participating in this, we mail all of our materials to patrons. So it’s a really extensive books-by-

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 7 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance mail service with an easy to use player that is also provided by the library. So in addition to offering you the talking books and Braille books if you use those we also distribute players to patrons. So you don’t need to have your own CD player or your own mp3 player or your own anything to use this service.

The cartridges are also easy to return. So all of our digital talking books come on a flash drive that’s in a bigger container about the size of a cassette, and to return it, it comes in a plastic container and all you have to do is flip over the mailing card. So you flip over the mailing card; there’s no postage required. We send it out to you with a special postage rate called free matter for the blind and you send it back to us that way, too. So there’s no cost to you – the materials are literally delivered right to your mailbox and can come back to us from there.

There are also a whole number of ways to choose which books you want. So you’re always welcome to call your local network library and talk to a reader advisor there about what you’d like to read next. We have an online public access catalog where you can log in as yourself and choose books that you want, and select them to be sent to you automatically. There’s also a magazine that’s sent to you every couple of months called Talking Book Topics and that comes from the National Library Service directly with all of the new books that we’ll be getting in the next couple of months.

So it’s usually 150 titles or so and comes with an order form in the back, and you can go through the list and see what sounds interesting to you; check off the ones that you like and mail that order form back to us, or fax it to us or email it back to us. So you can place your order in whichever communication means is most comfortable for you – by mail, by phone, by fax, by email, even over our Facebook page we get requests.

And then the other way to get service from us is a really unique library offering called Auto-Select Service, and patrons can tell us their preferences for books. So they can give us a list of their favorite authors – you like Danielle Steele and John Grisham and you do not like female narrators and you do not like long books and you want no sex and no violence, and we can plug in all of these factors into your profile and match books to you automatically. And you can tell us how often you want books: “I want five books a month,” or “I always want ten books at a time so when I return one send one to replace it.” And the whole service can be automatic like that, sort of like your Netflix if any of you have or are subscribing to Netflix for DVDs.

And finally let me tell you a little bit about the quality and the scope of the collection. Right now there are over 30,000 talking book titles. They’re all narrated by humans, professional narrators, not volunteers. And it’s a collection

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 9 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance that’s meant to mimic the scope of a small- to medium- sized public library collection. So you’re going to find all of your best-sellers, some non-fiction, a lot of biographies, a lot of mysteries and romances and sci-fi.

What you’re not going to find is really heavy educational and scholarly material. So it’s not meant to be a college library; it’s not meant to help you with your research paper necessarily. This is meant as a recreational and a collection for entertainment. You’ll certainly find all of the classics in it though.

In addition to books we have about 40 magazine titles available including People, Sports Illustrated, Consumer Reports, Health & Wellness, newsletters – and those too can be delivered right to your home on a digital cartridge.

And then for all of you, since you’re so computer savvy, what you’re probably going to be interested in is our BARD Braille and Audio Reading Download service. And this is a totally online download service for both talking books and Braille books if you’re Braille readers, and there are 50,000 titles available on BARD.

And it’s a totally different eBook model than the one you’ll find in most public libraries. You can download any of those 50,000 books anytime you want no matter how many other people have them at the same time, so there’s an unlimited number of users able to download the same

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 10 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance book at the same time. There’s also no due date on them so you can download the book and keep it forever. Most public library eBooks right now, you download them and there’s a 14- or 21-day loan period and then the file, you know, just spontaneously combusts and disappears from your device. But not so with the BARD materials.

And so this is a really great free option for getting your books immediately. You don’t have to wait for them to come in the mail. You don’t have to talk to a reader advisor. If you already know what you want you just log into the website and download the files. If you’re using BARD on a computer you transfer the files onto a flash drive and then plug that flash drive into the player that we provide to you.

Or there’s a free BARD mobile app called BARD Mobile. It’s available in the Apple App Store and it does exactly what the BARD website does. All of the 50,000 books are available there – the difference is you can also play them back on the app. So you can find the book you want, download it to your device and listen on your device. So this is a really sort of revolutionary service for us to be offering and we just launched that app last September.

This sounds like it might be a good time to pause and see if there are any questions about the collection and what’s available and how to use the service.

Tom Babinski I have a couple of questions that were written in. One of them is “If you want a book from BARD that is not in the collection can the National Library Service try to get that book?

Caroline Ashby The answer is yes, they can certainly try to get that book. The way to go about it is to contact your local network library, whichever library you have your account with, and ask them to get in touch with the NLS Collection Development Team and let them know that there was a patron request for that title. In my experience I would say about half of the times I submit patron requests NLS ends up recording that title or finding that title and making it available. So it does happen. It doesn’t happen for all titles and it depends on how popular they think that title will be with other patrons, because obviously they have limited resources. But there is a means by which you can make that request known to the NLS.

Tom Babinski We also have a question that says “Even though I download most of the books I read these days, I wondered if there is a way to request that all correspondence from the NLS or local library be sent via email instead of in print. I’ve occasionally had a book checked out for a long time and the overdue notice has been sent in print only.”

Caroline Ashby That’s really going to depend on your local network library and their capability for sending electronic notices. I know the circulation system that we use is called KLAS – Keystone Library Automation System, and right now there’s no way to send electronic notices. They’ve promised us that they’re working on it and we’ll be able to offer that feature in upcoming versions of the software, but 50% of the network libraries are using that automation system. So at least half of the network libraries are not able to offer all of their correspondence via email – although I would say that it’s probably coming down the line.

Caller I don’t have a cell phone. Do any of those apps, would they work on a Victor Reader Stream?

Chancey Fleet This is Chancey speaking now. If you have a Victor Reader Stream for this moment you still need a Mac or a PC to download the BARD books. So you’d go to the website and sign up for BARD and then download the BARD book, and then there are lots of different instructions online, on the BARD site itself and on YouTube walking you through the process of how to download the book. You do something called unzipping the book and then you can place it in the right folder on your Victor Reader Stream. You also have to authorize that player, so you can get in touch with your local network library about authorizing the Victor Reader Stream or you can do it from the BARD website to play our books.

I am told by HumanWare that in the very near future, we’re talking perhaps before the end of this summer, there will be the capability to with the second generation, newer Victor Stream download BARD books directly using the wireless feature that’s built into the Victor Stream. It’s not a capability that’s available today but it may be worth checking the HumanWare and BARD websites because I am told that by the end of this summer, this is a capability that the newer streams will have.

Tom Babinski I’ve got a couple more written questions and then I think we should move on to the next subject area. One of the questions is “Are you working on an app for Android devices?”

Chancey Fleet This is Chancey again. I’m happy to say that the National Library Service is in the process of beta testing a BARD app for Android. And the beta test being studied has been released to a certain number of individuals who expressed an early interest in using BARD with Android; and in return for getting to try it early those individuals provide feedback. So if there are things that are wrong with the app or don’t work as expected that team of users then reports back to NLS.

When that beta phase of the project is over then the Android app can be released to the public. We don’t have specific data on when that will be but it is in the works and you should check the BARD website and watch out for more news perhaps later this year or early this year. We may have something more to report.

Tom Babinski One more question and then I think we should move on. The question is “I’ve been using the National Library Service books for years but do not recall ever getting a

Caroline Ashby So if you’re looking for a password and user ID to use BARD to download your books, you get that by visiting the BARD website and applying to use BARD. So that website is www.nlsbard.loc.gov and on that first page there’s a link to “Application Instructions,” and you follow that link, put in your name, your home address and the fact that you have a digital player. You tell them what your local network library is and they will send you a temporary password to use BARD once the library checks that they have you in their records as an active patron.

So the user ID and password isn’t automatic. It comes after you apply to use BARD at that website, which is www.nlsbard.loc.gov. And Tom, I also see a question on here about “Even though you said that NLS materials were available only to Americans are there any exceptions?” There are. You have to live in the US though. So the service is available to any eligible person who resides in the US or a US citizen that resides abroad. So if you are in Canada say but happen to be a US citizen you’re eligible for NLS service there but otherwise not.

Tom Babinski Okay, I’m going to throw it back to Caroline if you’d like to continue or change hosts, wherever your organization is at this point. Anyway, let’s go back to the library and carry on.

Caroline Ashby This is Caroline. I’m going to turn it over to Chancey to talk about some other literacy resources, but I also want to take a moment just to mention that while talking books represent most of the circulation for library materials we also have a really robust Braille collection with about 15,000 titles in it. And Braille books are also available to be mailed to you free of charge and they can also be downloaded via the BARD website. And you can read them on a refreshable Braille display that you have. So here’s Chancey.

Chancey Fleet So this is Chancey speaking and I want to talk about some additional literacy resources that are available online that can complement the BARD collection because while the BARD collection is wonderful, as Caroline mentioned earlier it doesn’t have a deeply developed technical or academic content base. And so there are other areas, like crafts, cooking, home maintenance, special interests, particular religious publications, and so there are some

Before I get into the individual services let me just say that the services I’m going to discuss today all have the same eligibility requirements as does BARD and as does the National Library Service. So suppose you sign up for the National Library Service and then want to sign up for one of these others. You’ll tell the other service that you’re currently a patron of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and that other service can then check with your local network library, verify you’re a patron in good standing. And if you are that serves as your proof of disability and therefore your eligibility for one of the other eBook providers I’m going to discuss.

I’d like to begin by mentioning Bookshare. Bookshare is a website, you can reach them at www.bookshare.org., that hosts a collection that currently numbers 280,000 titles – so over a quarter of a million books – as well as several newspapers and magazines. These books are not narrated by human narrators. Instead, they are downloads in what is called the DAISY format. Basically the DAISY format is just really structured and protected text. It’s a specialized format for people who are blind or visually impaired and it needs to be that format to stay on the right side of copyright laws.

What it means for you is that instead of a human narrator you’ll be accessing the book using the same type of assistive technologies you’d ordinarily use. So if you use either the Windows Magnifier, Zoom on the Mac, Magic ZoomText – if you use magnification you can use that to read your Bookshare book. If you use a screen reader that speaks to you, so JAWS or Voiceover, you can use that to read your book. You can use a refreshable Braille display as well.

You can access the titles in a variety of different ways. Once you’ve joined you can go to the website and choose “Read Now” and read the book page-by-page right in your browser. You can download free software that Bookshare provides for Mac or PC that will let you magnify the book and have it read out loud. You can download the book and open it in a web browser even when you don’t have an internet connection and use magnification, speech or Braille. If you have a Victor Stream or either specialized book player you can use that to play the Bookshare book. And finally if you have iOS or Android, each of those platforms offers apps that you can use to read the Bookshare books.

There are a few different ways to get a Bookshare membership. If you are a student your Bookshare membership is free, and not only K-12 and college students but anyone enrolled in a course of study in continuing education. So if you’re a student in a rehab

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 19 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance center learning Braille or learning to cook, you’re a student. If you’re doing continuing education at a local university, maybe taking one class, you’re a student. It all counts. So all you need to do when you apply is provide proof that you are a student – there’s I think one additional form that you download – and then your annual membership is free.

If you’re not a student of any kind you should check with your local public library, not necessarily your NLS branch but the public library and see if your library participates in Project LEAP. Project LEAP is sponsored by a mainstream eBook provider called Overdrive and it provides a free one-year membership for people that are eligible in libraries across the country. So you can actually Google the name of your local library in conjunction with Project LEAP and see if you qualify. You can ask your local library; you can ask us and we can try to find out for you. If you don’t qualify for any of those options you can pay a $25 activation fee and after that it’s $50 a year for unlimited access to books that you can download from Bookshare.

The collection is very deep and very wide – whatever your interest is it’s probably there. If you’re vegan or gluten- free and you need a cookbook it’s a great place to go. If you like to quilt or knit it’s a great place to go. If you need a book on engineering, I mean the list goes on and on.

Because it’s not human narrated it’s probably the deepest collection of a specialized nature in the world.

Does anyone have questions about Bookshare before I move on to talk about NFB-Newsline?

Caller Yes, if I’m not mistaken that is available in Canada I do believe, and are we also eligible for the free membership in the Hadley Bookshare thing if it is not available in Canada?

Tom Babinski If you are a student of Hadley you are indeed eligible for Bookshare at no cost. As far as the eligibility in Canada I’m not an expert on Bookshare so I’m not absolutely positive about that, but my indication is that it probably is. But we can look into that and get you a more positive answer here in a moment.

Caller That would be great because I am a student so I’ll be alright.

Chancey Fleet I don’t know the exact particulars of how Bookshare membership works in Canada. I know there are some titles and some agreements with particular publishers that Bookshare has that make those titles available to Bookshare subscribers from many different countries. And I know that long-term Bookshare has as a primary goal increasing access for international subscribers. But I don’t believe the entire content base that’s available in the US is currently available to international subscribers. I think it’s a subset of titles and it would be best to contact Bookshare support directly to get a more detailed explanation of what is and isn’t available in each country.

Caller So when they say you need to be a student they mean a US student I suppose.

Chancey Fleet So the student qualification I believe does not depend on where you reside. So I think you can be a student anywhere and qualify for a free… Although you know what, it’s sponsored by the US Department of Education so I would, let me walk back. I suspect that it is only for US students unfortunately but I would encourage you to contact Bookshare support directly to be sure.

Now, if you’re a foreign student enrolled in a US school like Hadley then the student free membership would cover you.

Caller Okay, well it is Hadley of which I am a student so I guess I’m covered. Thank you.

Tom Babinski Okay. If there are no more questions let’s carry on. Go ahead, Chancey.

Chancey Fleet Okay. Next up I’m going to talk about a service that’s also available to US residents, and I’m sorry for the US- centricity of this presentation; and this service is NFB- Newsline. NFB-Newsline can be accessed on the web at www.nfbnewslineonline.org and you can also sign up for it by calling a telephone number which is 410-659-9314 and we do have a resource sheet that you all will be receiving as well if you’re not able to take that down right now.

And Newsline has a variety of content. It has local newspapers as well as national newspapers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It also has magazines including Wired, Vanity Fair, Economist, People and many others. It also carries TV listings, weather including severe weather alerts, and ballot initiatives along with other voter information.

This is a completely free service that can be accessed in a variety of different ways. If you have a touchtone phone and don’t wish to use a computer or smartphone you can simply call a local number that will be provided to you when you sign up, put in a six-digit code and a four-digit password and then make your selections using touch tones. For example you can press “4” to get right to your favorite publications, let’s say #2 was The New York Times – you could then press that. Then you’d hear something like “Book Review Desk – 10,” “Editorial Desk – 11,” “National Desk – 12,” and you can hit that two-digit code to get to the particular section of the paper you want to read and then you can use a single touchtone, a 1 or a 3 to move forward and backward through the articles.

The narration is done by a synthesized electronic voice but it’s a pretty good high-quality sounding voice. If you’ve heard the one on the Victor Stream it is the same one as the first generation Victor Stream. For those people that prefer to use magnification, their own speech or Braille, it’s possible to go to the website, log in and read the newspapers and magazines on the web.

Even though it’s possible to go to the website for a lot of these newspapers and magazines, they have a mainstream website, Newsline is nice because all the graphics and pictures and clutter are stripped away and it’s just you and the articles. If you have a smartphone, if

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 24 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance you have specifically an iPhone, an iPod Touch or an iPad you can use a free application from Newsline that will automatically go and get your favorite papers every day and allow you to use magnification, speech or Braille to read them right on your smartphone.

There is a demo mode if you’d like to try Newsline out for yourself before you become a subscriber. What you’ll do is call this number – 888-882-1629. Use the subscriber code 000999 and the security code all 9’s – 9999 – and that will allow you to log in and try the service before you subscribe. Does anyone have questions about Newsline service before I continue?

Caller Can you give the website again?

Chancey Fleet Caroline’s putting the website and the demo code up on the screen right now.

Tom Babinski We can add that to the resource material that will be available when we archive this seminar. So we will have that available to everyone. Caller I have a question about downloading a book from the library down here in Tennessee. I just wonder if anybody else has any problems – does JAWS interfere in your

Chancey Fleet Sure. When you go online and try to download books are you saying you’re getting an error message? What in particular occurs?

Tom Babinski I think we’re going to have to move on; we’re not getting a response to that.

Chancey Fleet Sir, I’m sorry we missed you. You’re welcome to call us directly or to call your local network NLS library. It sounds like you are having trouble with BARD and we’d like to help you so I’m sorry that we missed you just now. Please do be in touch – we won’t forget you.

So I’m going to talk about one more service which is Learning Ally. Learning Ally was formerly known as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic and it has recently kind of rebranded, I think because they want to emphasize that they work with more types of print disabilities than just visual and dyslexia. You can find them at www.learningally.org.

Primarily their focus is on providing textbooks but since they provide textbooks to students of all ages from pre-K

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 26 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance all the way up through PhD candidates you’ll find that their collection actually includes a lot of classics, a lot of technical material, a lot of literary criticism, children’s books and much more. So if the book you want is not available anywhere else it’s definitely worth giving Learning Ally a try.

The cost of a Learning Ally membership is $119 a year. The books are read by volunteer human narrators, so they’re not always studio quality but they are always intelligible and it’s not a synthesized voice, it’s a real person. And you can listen to those books using free software that you can download to your Mac or PC or using their app if you have an iOS smartphone. Or you can listen to those books on a specialized book player like a BookSense or a Victor Reader Stream.

Those books, like the Bookshare books, are offered in the DAISY format which means it’s very easy to jump by page, section or chapter and get to the part of the book that you need to access. Does anyone have questions about Learning Ally?

Tom Babinski We’ve got a question posted that says “I thought Learning Ally was only textbooks.”

Chancey Fleet

So Learning Ally does focus on textbooks but one man’s textbook may be another man’s leisure reading. So suppose that The Circle by Dave Edgars gets assigned to somebody somewhere in a college class, that book then joins the Learning Ally collection and you can help yourself to it whether you’re enrolled in a class or not.

Tom Babinski Okay, Chancey, thank you.

Caroline Ashby This is Caroline. I’m going to switch it up for a sec and talk about a trend that we’re seeing in public libraries around the country. So dishearteningly a lot of times we hear from new patrons of the library that they feel like they can no longer use their local public library because programs and services there are not accessible to them now that they can’t read print books. And we’re seeing a trend in the other direction and I hope that you are or will soon see that in your local public libraries, too.

Accessibility has really been put on the map for public libraries and a lot of it is because of a new initiative coming out of the Urban Libraries Council called the Library EDGE Initiative. And Library EDGE is a set of benchmarks that libraries can try to meet that outline how a good, well-functioning and well-administered public library satisfies the needs of its patrons for technology

One of those eleven benchmarks is all about accessibility. And so the benchmark requires that you have computer stations with magnification software and text-to-speech software, adjustable-height workstations, workstations that a wheelchair user could use easily. It also requires that the staff at that library is trained in how to use assistive technology and gets annual training in new technologies and new equipment that’s available.

And right now around the country there are over 450 public libraries participating in this program voluntarily, so this is really putting on the map as I said accessibility for a lot of local smaller public libraries that might not have had occasion to think about accessibility in terms of technology in the past but now are. And we’re really thinking and hoping that once accessibility is on the map it’s going to translate over to programs and other services, and we would like for all of you and all of the folks in the New York area to be able to walk into your local public library and feel like there’s a home for you there and there’s a computer with your name on it, and that you can walk up to anybody who works there and use their expertise to help you with your technology needs. So we just sort of wanted to put that little light at the end of the tunnel there for you.

Next we’re going to talk about some emerging resources – so that’s an emerging trend in public libraries; we’re going to talk about some emerging resources for people with print disabilities. And I’m going to turn it back over to Chancey for that.

Chancey Fleet So as an assistive technology professional for something like the last eleven or twelve years I’ve really witnessed a change to the degree in which what we would call mainstream products – so products that are not designed just for people who are blind or have low vision – are accessible. And I’m happy to say that it’s a trend in a positive, mostly positive direction.

Some of you may know that about five years ago Voiceover, the first screen reader for a mobile touchscreen device was released for the iPhone, and now you can find it for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad. Most devices also have Zoom which is built-in magnification technology. Mac computers also have Zoom and Voiceover built in and many users who have low vision or are blind are finding that they’re able to use those built-in solutions to complete their primary computing tasks either on the go or at their desktops or laptops.

Now we’re seeing that Android is also improving in accessibility. Android is a direct competitor to iPhone and iPod Touch and is an operating system that’s increasingly

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 30 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance popular on smartphones. Android has a screen reader that is built in and can be activated from the Accessibilities settings which is called TalkBack. And Android also has a triple tap to magnify a feature. So it’s been heartening to see that although Android doesn’t have all the capability in screen reading and magnification right now that iOS does, Android accessibility is improving and now there are multiple products on the market for mobile that offer fairly rich accessibility experiences.

With the release of Windows 8 recently, the Narrator screen reader and the magnification tool which is just called Magnifier, both experienced considerable improvements. If I go home for Thanksgiving and I find that my father has purchased a new computer and it’s a Windows 8 machine, as a blind person I can turn on Narrator and help him set up his machine. I’d still want to use another screen reader as my primary screen reader to do kind of power user kinds of things, but to check a quick email or change settings or write a quick document I am able to use Narrator. And as a low vision user I might be able to use Magnifier, the built-in technology that’s available.

It’s recently been announced that the Amazon FirePhone which will run the new Fire OS will also have magnification and screen reading capabilities built in, and the most recently-released Kindle, the Kindle Fire HD, also has improved accessibility. Accessibility is not perfect on any

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 31 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance of these products and has matured more on some products than others, but we are seeing an accelerated trend whereby accessibility is built into mainstream products. And it becomes our job as library staff to help said folks orient themselves to the changes, to help folks discover what devices might work best for them and to help them get acquainted with new software and new ways of doing things.

To that end I’d like to share a couple apps, and I’m highlighting iOS apps because iOS apps has really robust support for screen reading and magnification. These are some apps that our patrons find helpful for independent living.

The first one I’d like to highlight is a free app from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and it’s called Eye Note. This application can be used to identify American paper currency. So you use the iOS camera, focus it above the bill and in a clear synthetic voice the application will tell you what kind of paper currency you have.

The next one that I’d like to highlight is a $10 app and it’s called Prizmo. That one also uses the iPhone camera but it also gives you vibration feedback and vocal feedback to help you line up a good shot of a printed page, whether it be mail or a circular or a letter. It takes a picture and then it will read the text out loud for you.

One of our favorite apps around here, I think it amuses the other library staff to no end – it’s called TapTapSee. The download is free but it’s subscription-based, it’s about $9.99 a month. And you can literally take pictures of any object and the picture will go to a web worker somewhere, and that person will respond with a description of the image. So for example I could take a picture of the sign outside this building and it would read the name of the library. I could take a picture of the salt and pepper that I got at the deli and it would tell me which is the salt and which is the pepper, which is something that I personally really prefer to know in advance.

Does anyone have any questions so far?

Caller It’ll go to a person and they’ll respond to a description of the image. Caller Yeah, I’ve heard of that.

Volley Yeah, TapTapSee, that one – by the way, this is Volley Nelson from Georgia. By the way, TapTapSee, that one used to be free.

Chancey Fleet So it was free initially and then I think the developers realized how much labor they were going to need to

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 33 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance engage to keep it going. So those web workers are not volunteers. They’re paid individuals which is why the response comes back so fast, usually within 10 to 15 seconds. And so there are a couple options. I think there’s a 100-picture pack you can buy or you can do the monthly subscription. It would be great if it was subsidized and for free; unfortunately it isn’t but I just want folks to be aware that it’s an option.

Caller But doesn’t the other person have to have it too?

Caller No, it’s some random person that they hire, that they hire and then they’re paid to describe to you what the images are.

Caller What good is that going to do you if I have it?

Caller Well yeah, that’s true.

Caller There’s also the BARD mobile app is out. That’s a free one.

Chancey Fleet

So you’re right, it’s a one-sided thing. When you go to TapTapSee your image goes to a web worker they’ve hired and that person’s job is to look at images and describe them and get right back to you, so no one has to have it on the other end. You’re also right, that the BARD mobile app is another really great app for iOS and it is absolutely free.

Unless there are any other burning questions I want to move along. I see that we’re running out of time and I want to talk about finding accessibility information online if I may.

I’d first like to, since I was just talking about iOS I’d like to highlight two destinations that are on your resource sheet. One is the Apple Accessibility Page itself which offers a lot of great content on how to use Voiceover and how to use Zoom either on an iOS device or on a desktop device. And another really great resource is called Apple Vis, it’s on your research sheet, Apple Vis. And it is a community of blind and low vision users who use Apple devices.

So users take time out of their day to rate apps for accessibility so that you can make sure an app is accessible before you pay for it and download it. They also write tutorials and guides on how to do various things from the first day that you get your iOS device out of the box to some pretty advanced stuff and they also review devices and accessories like Bluetooth, keyboards and

Also on the resource sheet I placed several dedicated customer service numbers and websites for customers with disabilities. Apple, Microsoft and AT&T each have dedicated phone and web portals for customers with disabilities and I suggest that you use them because then the technical support that you’re getting is going to have in mind that you’re using assistive technology – and if you’re blind you won’t be told to point and click. If you’re low vision then the person on the other end of the phone will understand how your magnification software is working so we really recommend those pretty highly.

I’d also like to point out that if you go to YouTube and put in “Accessibility” or “Voiceover” or “Magnification” and the name of the software or hardware that you’re using, oftentimes you can find YouTube tutorials that are useful.

Recently I found some really great ones that Yahoo posted for Yahoo Mail accessibility, and even though I hadn’t done anything with Yahoo Mail in the longest time I had a gentleman who came in who needed some assistance and we were able to look at a YouTube tutorial and figure out from the keyboard with no mouse how to send and receive emails and manage the inbox. So YouTube is a great place to check.

So is iTunes under “Podcasts. “ In particular there are several Voiceover podcasts and there are podcasts on various Stream Readers and other assistive technologies, so those are great places to check for accessibility resources.

I’d finally like to point out one more app which is called iBlink Radio, and the reason that I’m not categorizing this with the others is that it is kind of an online resource unto itself. What iBlink Radio does, and you can access it if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, is to aggregate content from radio reading services, podcasts and shows from across the country that’s of interest to people who are blind or visually impaired. They have lots of information on assistive technology including dedicated shows for Android accessibility, iOS accessibility and accessibility from a low vision perspective. And they also have other content.

One of my favorites is a show called Cooking in the Dark with Dell Campbell. It’s a cooking show from the perspective of a person whose totally blind and you can listen and learn all kinds of great non-visual alternative techniques to use in the kitchen. There’s much, much more out there and I highly recommend it. It’s a free app – there’s no subscription, there’s no catch and it’s called iBlink Radio and it’s available on your resource sheet.

I can take one or two questions and then I can turn it back to Caroline.

Darla This is Darla from Oklahoma. I was wondering what was the website that you mentioned, I think it started with a P where you can download it on your iPhone.

Chancey Fleet Are you asking about the app where you can go to, or the website where you can go to learn about strategies for iOS and Apple devices? That one is Apple Vis, www.applevis.com, and the complete list of websites and apps we went over is available on the Resource Sheet that Tom will be circulating as well.

Caller I think Darla was asking about Prizmo.

Caller So Prizmo is the app that you can use to scan and read printed material. It costs $9.99 and you can find it in the Apple App Store. Just be careful – the spelling is weird. It’s Prizmo.

Caller I’d like to inquire please – the different sites and materials, will they be available after the broadcast at some location?

I’m kind of new at this so I wanted to find out where I can pick up some of the addresses for the websites.

Tom Babinski When you go to the Seminars@Hadley website in the Archives you’ll see this seminar there, and with it you’ll be able to click on a link that’ll take you to the resources. And we’ll have all of that information available there at that point.

Caller Excellent, thank you very much. I’m enjoying this very much, thank you. Ellen Hi, it’s Ellen again. I’m very excited to know that there’s an app on my iPhone that I’ll be able to use since I have recently lost my eyesight and I always see lights. So See TV is getting very difficult to use and I was sad thinking that I’d have to give it up and have someone to read my mail and stuff for me, but if the iPhone can do it for me then I’ll be able to do it on my own again. Thank you so, so much.

Chancey Fleet You’re welcome. We’re really excited to be here and it’s a really exciting time. I always say blindness isn’t necessarily something that you wanted to have happen, but if you have low vision or blindness this is a great time because the opportunities are always increasing. And

Tom Babinski Caroline, do you have anything final to say before we wrap this all up?

Caroline Ashby Yeah, I just want to talk about one other resource that’s coming down the pike. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is about to offer free currency readers to anyone who needs one in the United States. And the network NLS libraries like us will be distributing them directly to patrons of the library. So the devices will be coming to the libraries in late fall and distributed to the people who need them after that.

As if you needed another reason to be a member of your NLS network library, if you are a member you’ll get your free currency reader in late fall. If you are not a member you will not get it until early 2015. So I just wanted to put that on the radar for everybody, that if you have a need or would like a free currency reader the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will be providing one starting later this year.

And finally I guess we’d just like to thank everybody for participating and for asking us really insightful questions. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us or have a look at our resource sheet. We’re really glad to have been able to

Chancey Fleet Thanks guys.

Jill Rothstein Thank you.

Tom Babinski Hi, this is Tom. I want to thank everybody. This has been a great seminar, and I want to remind all of you that are listening that all of our seminars like this one will be archived on our website and they’re available 24/7. So if you want to hear this or any of the other seminars that’s the place to go.

Thanks to all for participating today. We value your feedback. There’s a short survey that will pop up on your screen very shortly. And if you can just take a moment, it’s very brief and just give us some honest answers about the experience you had today we would really appreciate it. And again, I want to just thank everybody for participating. This has been a great seminar. Take care.

Caller I heard about the free money readers on Twitter. The question I had, there’s one more question I had – when will NLS make it possible for Bookshare books to be read on the NLS digital talking book players?

Chancey Fleet That’s not something that I am currently aware that NLS is planning to do. That’s not to say that it won’t happen. The difficulty is that Bookshare books are basically text and the NLS digital player doesn’t have its own text-to-speech engine in it. So at this time NLS digital talking book

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 42 of 45 2014-07-16-Audio Books Apps and Assistance machines don’t play Bookshare books and I’m not aware of a roadmap that will lead to that happening I’m sorry to say.

Caller Bookshare does have books with DAISY audio so you can play those on the NLS players and the Victor Reader Stream. So when you do your preferences on the Bookshare, instead of downloading your books with DAISY text you can do it DAISY audio. You can always change your preferences in order to do that.

Chancey Fleet And this is why I love community seminars. You are absolutely right. I completely blanked on that fact that you can do that. So you generate the audio using Bookshare and then place it on a flash drive and yes it will, it will play on your NLS player.

Caroline Ashby Ooh, but how do you get it to do that?

Chancey Fleet So you’ll have to go to Bookshare and read up in their help section about how to generate the audio file – I don’t have the exact set of steps in front of me. If you’d like to contact us later I can follow up and provide you with the information but it does seem like our colleague on the

Caller How does the library determine which books are cassette and which are Braille? What do they use to determine which, if they want to put the books in Braille or cassette for?

Caroline Ashby That’s a good question. The budget for producing talking books is much greater than that for producing Braille books because readership is so much higher for talking books. So whereas NLS makes available about 2000 talking books a year they make available about 500 Braille books. So the vast majority, 75% of the books they make every year are in talking book format and the rest are in Braille.

I’m not sure exactly how they choose from book to book which is a Braille book and which is a talking book so that’s something I can do a little research on and try to get it back to you.

Caller Okay, how can I contact you Miss Chancey?

Chancey Fleet

The best way to reach us collective is to use our email address which is [email protected].

Tom Babinski Again I want to thank everybody. We’re going to wrap this up now and the next thing you’ll see on your screen will be the survey. And if anyone has any further questions please feel free to email our guests and also you can contact us here at Hadley at any time. Thanks a lot, bye- bye.