Category: Cram Session
Does anyone have any tips on what to do after obtaining the list of textbooks for a university course? Are there places where one can sometimes obtain ebooks, or should we go straight to the scanner with the print book? Thanks for any tips.
Ask your college's disability service, first. They may have access to ebooks or scanning that could save you some time or money.
I personally go first to RFB and D, or what is now called learning Ally. If you get a membership they have most textbooks in an audio format. HOwever, I usually have one or two each semester that they do not have. FOr that, I go to disabilitys services. THere first step is to contact the publisher, who may be willing to give you the textbook in an accessible format. After that, for me, disabilitys scans a copy of the print book I purchase.
Go to your college disability unit, often they have partnership with the publisher, where you can get the e-book directly from them for clost to nothing. However, some may want you to buy the book, then send them the invoice of perchase, and they will give you the e copy. Either way, you shouldn't scann the books yourself, specially if its text books. Good luck
Thanks guys. I will talk to Disability Services next week and see how I get along.
bookshare isn't bad either, and if you're a student you can have a account for free.
For me the disability services get my books for me and lately its been in PDF format. A few semesters ago it was mostly from RFBD. I know they work with the publishers to get accessible formats if they can't get it from another source. I think scanning a book should be the last option because it is time consuming. But that being said they had to scann a book for one of my class one time though.
I also use a combination of these techniques. First, I check Bookshare and RFB&D, now known as Learning Ally. If neither has it, I send the titles of the books I couldn't get from there to the Disability Access Services, as it is called at my college, and they send a request in to the publisher, and then the publisher in most cases sends the book in usually pdf form, although sometimes they will send it in MS Word.
I check out Learning Ally and Bookshare for the books. If they don't have them, I will ask Disability Services to scan the books or record them, or if I have the list far enough in advance, I'll ask Bookshare to obtain the book and put it into an accessible format. That worked out well; Bookshare took about two months to have the book ready for me.
yeah, I do the same, but my disability services mostly does the scanning themselves. does it fairly quickly too, and gives me them in .doc files.
Hi all,
What about if the book has graphics? For example, in a chemistry or physics course how would you get the pictures from the book? And I'm just curious, do any of your schools have embossers on campus?
I know for me, if the book has a table in it, the PDF scan is not great. It's readable if you want to take the time to comb through it though. I have never seen science texts done this way so I can't really speak to that aspect of it, but as I said I know charts and graphs are not great at times.
If you need to have the book ordered by youre disability services department, you might want to get it in a microsoft office word file. Sometimes, the book can be accessed online through the website for that particular textbook. If you want to find out more about that, i'd ask the instructor.
for my stats class I just have people describing stuff to me. it worked okay for stats, but not sure about sciences, yet.
For dealing with graphics, I had an online science book one semester that was absolutely incredible. The graphics had a short text description after them, and you could click on the graphic and a very detailed description would pop up. I wouldn't bank on this though since I've only seen it once with this one book.
another solution to this problem is that you may request that the pictures in your text be embossed. This is possible and your disabilities office should be more than able to do it. There are venders who braille texts specifically and your school should be able to pay for this.
OpenLibrary is also a possible e-book resource, though I'm not sure if they offer textbooks. Their books are mostly in Daisy format, and registration is free, though you do need a key from the NLS (national library services) in the Us, to be able to read the protected daisy on your device.
DeadNightWarrior, I had a similar experience with a world history textbook, I think this special labeling is done only by that publisher, but as you said, it would be great to see better-labeled graphics in online textbooks.
I have also heard and noticed that charts and graphs do not scan well, when this happened I would have the teacher or someone else explain it to me of what it is. At least then I would have a pretty good idea of what is is.
From what I've observed, Bookshare does a pretty good job of organizing tables and charts in their books in a manner that is readable and understandable. Is that what you mean by graphics?
I absolutely love bookshare because of their efficiency, and the fact that you can get a membership for free so long as you have proof of blindness and you are a student. I haven't tried requesting a book to be made but I'll have to do that. I have an account through NLS as well, and I've noticed that they don't seem to have as much educational materials written as Bookshare does. BARD and NLS seem to have more material that one would read for leisure.
I don't understand why some universities have you buy a copy of the book first before they can make an accessible copy. It's really stupid.
It's a publisher thing. They're not legally supposed to give you a copy without proof that you bought a copy just like every other student has to.
So glad that I found this board, because I'm leaving for college in a few weeks, so...
Aha, so if I wanted to get a version that works with the kindle app, or that works with iBooks from Apple, I'd have to buy a hard copy of the book first? This would mean paying for the damn thing twice.
It depends, some hard-copy books come with an access code which gives you an e-book and other study materials. I'm not sure whether the platform that publishers, such as W. W. Norton and Co. use for their digital e-books/learning materials is accessible. In other cases, the textbook you need, may be available from Ibooks or Kindle without the need to purchase a hard copy. You can also try Scribd, a subscription-based e-book service, which allows you to download books in Pdf and txt formats.
The one source I haven't seen mentioned here that I used most often was
amazon. If you have an iphone, the kindle app will read any kindle book with
voiceover. It only works with the iphone app, not the other versions, but it
works just fine. I haven't had any issues. You just buy the book from the kindle
store. There is also audible, which has certain books, depending on your major.