mobile readers Archives - Page 5 of 5

Published January 8, 2013

Do You Know These Bookshare Answers? #1

Greetings to all in 2013! This year, we are beginning a blog series with “Top Tips” to answer questions Bookshare Members commonly ask and provide suggestions that may help all Members become better users. Consider subscribing to this blog to get the tips in your email every week. This week, our tips center on quickly and easily finding answers and our mobile apps. Did you know, it can be quicker and easier to find an answer in the Support Portal on the Bookshare website than calling or emailing the support team? The portal has answers to many commonly asked questions.…

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Published October 25, 2012

Book Formats for Everyone!

Options are good, and Bookshare offers more choices in the form of books, reading tools, and now book formats. Bookshare wants to help its members read how and what they want to read. Over this past year, Bookshare added new download options to our existing book formats—DAISY Text and BRF (Braille Ready Format). Continue to use these formats with your existing assistive technologies; however, if you are looking for a different reading experience, you may want to try one of the new formats. The new book formats, DAISY Audio and MP3, provide more options in terms of technology and the…

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Published July 30, 2012

Happy Birthday Read2Go!

This month, Read2Go, the popular accessible eBook reader for the Apple iOS, turns one year old. Happy birthday Read2Go! To celebrate, we are running a Read2Go Giveaway on Twitter and sharing our reflections over the past year. And what a year it has been. Since the launch of Read2Go in July of 2011, over 16,000 apps have been installed in 33 countries around the world! When we originally developed Read2Go with partner Shinano Kenshi Co., Ltd, the developer of the PLEXTALK brand of products, we knew we were building an innovative app that could help many people with print disabilities…

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Published July 26, 2012

My Google Summer of Code Experience with Benetech

Many thanks to Thushan Ganegedara for this post about his summer project. I’m Thushan Ganegedara, a 3rd year undergraduate from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. My interests are Mobile Development and Computational Intelligence. My first-ever experience with Google Summer of Code has been with Benetech. I have realized that Benetech is indeed “technology serving humanity.” I feel fortunate to work with a set of employees who are technically competent yet very friendly and helpful. My project is associated with the ‘Go Read’ Android application. Go Read is a free e-book reader that people…

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Published May 1, 2012

Google Selected Benetech for Google Summer of Code

Students to Contribute to Development of Go Read Every summer, Google sponsors “Google Summer of Code” (GSoC) which offers stipends to postsecondary student developers and pairs them with open source mentoring organizations. Given Google’s high engineering standards, selection as a mentoring organization is a great honor! This year, Benetech was awarded three, top-notch students and is asking them to work on Go Read development projects. Go Read is a free, open source, accessible e-book reader for Android phones and tablets. Currently optimized for visually-impaired readers (and usable by anyone), Go Read allows readers to enjoy Bookshare books whenever and wherever…

Assistive Technology Spotlight – Texthelp Apps

We are happy to feature innovative new assistive technologies in this blog. Today, we want to tell you about a Web App from Texthelp, eBook Reader, that reads Bookshare books in the Cloud. eBook Reader is one of a new suite of Web Apps that work within browsers on iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, and other mobile devices as well as PCs and Macs. A short video shows how the eBook Reader works. Current Apps include: Read&Write Web, eBook Reader for Bookshare® eBooks, Speech, and Dictionary. Students in schools and colleges who use Read&Write GOLD can use these Apps at school…

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Published March 15, 2012

A Teen with Dyslexia Describes Benefits of Reading with Technology

A guest post by Brian Meersma, a student member of the Bookshare Advisory Board I am a high school sophomore with dyslexia. I was diagnosed at a young age, but was always eager to learn new things. Because I had trouble reading, my parents and grandparents would read to me for hours. I loved listening to all the great books they read to me and I knew there was no way I was able to read those books on my own. What I realized was that I had great listening skills. I got so much more out of books when…

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Published March 8, 2012

A New Way to Think about Assistive Technology

Glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, canes, walkers are all devices that help a person do something better than he/she could without them. We don’t usually think of these aids as “assistive technologies,” but they certainly assist with a better quality of life and more independent living. The term assistive technology usually refers to tools or devices used by a person with a disability. For example, a person who is blind or visually impaired can use devices like digital talking book players that read books aloud at the press of a button. Other devices display refreshable braille. These tactile devices have…

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Published February 16, 2012

What Is Text-to-Speech?

Special education, assistive technology, and technology in general is chock full of jargon. Bookshare uses terms that may seem like a foreign language, a fact I was recently reminded of while sharing a ride to Capitol Hill with a wise director from one of the many Parent Centers with whom we work. She encouraged me to stop talking like a PhD and to start talking like a “Ph-DO.” To this end, we’ll dedicate this and future blog posts to making our terminology and technology more accessible to all. This week, we focus on “text-to-speech” or TTS for short. What is…

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Published November 17, 2011

New Update for Read2Go … Now Available

Apple has now approved this release and it is available in the app store. A new version of Read2Go is now available in the iTunes store. This version has support for iOS 5.0 and further enhancements for handling large books. Large books will be broken into smaller segments, but the segments will be invisible to the user. It’s version 1.0.2.0. Thanks for your patience!

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Category: mobile readers