visual impairments Archives - Page 10 of 14

Published April 25, 2012

Furthering Accessibility of Graphs at the International Space Apps Challenge

Over the weekend of April 21 and 22, two engineers from the Bookshare team, Gerardo Capiel and Rom Srinivasan, participated in the International Space Apps Challenge, a two-day event designed to bring citizens from around the world together to solve challenges relevant to spatial exploration and social need. It’s a “code-a-thon” weekend – a technology development marathon – with engineers on all seven continents and in space volunteering their time, collaborating on solutions to interesting problems. The Bookshare team contributed one of the challenges for the weekend: to continue development of MathTrax, an open source graphing application developed by NASA…

Can We Give Too Much?

A guest post from Lucy Greco, a blind advocate for accessible technology. An Assistive Technology Specialist at UC Berkeley, San Francisco Bay Area, Greco is the user of various assistive technologies since the early 1980s. She is passionate about the ways technology makes the world more accessible to everyone but especially to individuals with disabilities. “For students with disabilities in college and universities, where do we draw the line between providing them support services and teaching them to be independent,” asks Lucy Greco. I graduated from California State University Hayward in 1997. The ADA was only six years old and…

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Published March 27, 2012

Volunteer for Exciting New Image Description Project!

A cutting-edge image description project is underway at Bookshare. Funded by the Leveraging Impact through Technology (LIT) award from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, this pilot project uses Poet, an open-source, crowd-sourcing image description tool developed by the DIAGRAM Center, another OSEP-funded project operated by Benetech and its partners. This innovative pilot project needs volunteers. Poet makes it easy to create accessible image descriptions and add them to DAISY books. Volunteer describers log into a website, select the book they are working on, see its images, and enter descriptions for the images in the appropriate…

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Published February 9, 2012

The Early Days of Bookshare

Eagerness, excitement, dedication, and pride characterized the early days of Bookshare. Many of the early Bookshare Members with disabilities were also volunteers who dedicated long hours to scanning and proofreading books, prior to submitting the books to Bookshare. These volunteers literally opened a book and pressed the pages one-by-one, onto a flatbed scanner, hoping the scanner would accurately recognize the text on the page. We’ve gathered some stories from early Members and volunteers to remind ourselves what Bookshare was like and how good it was! Members are welcome to contribute more to this retrospective through Comments in this blog. “It…

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Published January 6, 2012

Read2Go Inducted into AppleVis Hall of Fame

Last month, Read2Go was selected as a potential inductee into the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame, and this month, we are pleased to announce that Read2Go was chosen as one of the eight inaugural inductees. This Hall of Fame, to quote from the AppleVis website, showcases “the passion and hard work that app developers put into creating great apps that are fully accessible to VoiceOver users. These apps place powerful tools into the palms of our hands, and give access to services, information, media or entertainment that the sighted world takes for granted.” We share this honor and want…

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Published December 7, 2011

What You Can Do During Inclusive Schools Week

This week, December 5 to 9, I recently learned is Inclusive Schools Week sponsored by Stetson & Associates, Inc., and this year marks the 11th anniversary of the event. The purpose of the week, to quote from their website, is “to highlight the progress schools have made in providing a supportive and quality education to students of diverse backgrounds and abilities and to provide an opportunity for educators, students, and families to ensure that schools continue to improve their ability to successfully educate all children.” Apparently, thousands of districts are planning to celebrate this week and participate in “Moving From…

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Published December 2, 2011

Boy Scout Manuals on Bookshare!

Credit for this post goes to Bryan Wendell, with the Boy Scouts of America. Here’s the original. For some boys, reading doesn’t come easy. And that makes the Boy Scouts of America a challenging place. The Boy Scout Handbook. Merit Badge pamphlets. BSA training manuals. Daunting prospects for boys with print disabilities. Fortunately, the BSA has some great resources for those Scouts. Starting with Bookshare. This summer, the BSA signed a memorandum of understanding that cements a partnership aimed at improving the Scouting experience for boys and girls with print disabilities. Bookshare’s cool online library (bookshare.org) allows Scouts in your…

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Published November 11, 2011

District of Columbia Public Schools Project Changes Students’ Lives

Picture a room with senior administrators from some of our nation’s largest districts. And then add tears in many eyes. You’re picturing the room at the Council of Great City Schools recent conference in Boston, MA, during the presentation given by Norma Villanueva, Director of Low Incidence Disabilities for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). In describing her work with her students with visual impairments and physical disabilities, she told the story of several students whose lives were turned around by assistive technologies and Bookshare. Instead of dropping out, these students have graduated and have a future. Two videos…

Graduate Student Finds Books in Bookshare

Many thanks to Lauren Conner, graduate student, for sharing her story. Lauren Conner stumbled across Bookshare last year looking for postsecondary accessible books for her studies in Community and College Counseling. She attends Longwood University in Virginia and has impaired vision. “When I look for a textbook on psycho-pathology, ethics or behavior modification, I am thrilled that the digital book is already in Bookshare’s online library collection,” said Lauren. “Another member must have taken the same course and requested all the required books that I need. I love that!” Since birth, Lauren’s visual impairment made it difficult for her to…

Making Research Fun With Bookshare – Part Three

Guest post by Deborah Armstrong, Alternate Media Specialist, DeAnza Community College, CA Different Reading Devices…Is it Time for a Change? If you don’t like reading books on your computer, have you tried portable reading devices? I found portable devices tedious so I taught myself how to use the two screen-reader friendly DAISY readers for Bookshare members –Victor Reader Soft and Amis. Both applications let me sort through books on my computer first. After I do that, I move the books to my portable device to read them. Also, consider downloading the free Read:Out Loud Bookshare edition text reader. This way…

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Category: visual impairments