What apps and technologies are readers with disabilities using?

[kestrell]

This is from the Bookshare Blog, so it reflects a specific subsection of readers with visual and print disabilities, but my advice is to support that the trend toward using mainstream tech and avoiding assistive tech as much as possible.
http://bookshareblog.wpengine.com/2019/03/apps-bookshare-members-use/

Comments

[duskpeterson]

Are there any particular reasons you advise avoiding assistive tech? Is it for cost reasons, or do you see something wrong with the assistive tech industry?

[kestrell]

I'm intending on writing a lengthy post about this, but the HYMNS Booksense ebook reader I've been using for the past few years recently died, and so I pulled out the Blaze reader I bought a couple of years ago as its replacement, and it is the most unbelievable $500 piece of shit. It crashes about every other day, and I have to constantly carry around a sharp skinny nail file so I can rebott it sing the tiny recessed button. It supposedly can handle xml and rtf, but mostly just crashes if I try to use those formats, so everything I put on it has to be converted to HTML or plaintext. It skips chunks of texts, sometimes front matter, sometimes part of a sentence, sometimes chapters.

If I fall asleep while listening to it and the battery gets down to something like twenty percent, it crashes. It supposedly can use Wi-Fi and Web radio, and at first I could listen to some of the BBC radio stations, but now it just crashes.

The articular kind of crash it does is typically freezing all the buttons, so it makesa dull punk sound, but doesn't do anything.

Because I bought it a couple of years ago, the warranty is up, and previous experience with this company tells me they resist addressing quality issues even when the device is still covered under warranty.

When I say I bought this device a couple of yeas ago, I mean it has been gently and carefully swaddled in my sock drawer since I bought it, so it hasn't even been bumped, which is probably better treatment than it would get in a warehouse.

I can deal with pretty any of the shit the world throws at me, but I really need access to books to deal, so this is completely devastating my quality of life at the moment, and I'm also currently really sick with flu, so need my books even more.

And it isn't just me: I looked on Amazon for reviews fo these devices and half the people say they don't work out of the box, and they can't get the company to do anything about it, plus they often get rude treatment.

I apologize for the long rant, but I am just sick from how companies that sell assistive tech get away with selling shit tech to the people who need it most, have to pay the most, and can't even rely on getting working devices.

So I'm done with assistive tech companies that rip off blind people, and my advice to other people with disabilities is to avoid such companies as much as possible, because assistive tech companies make used car salesmen seem forthright and honest.

[duskpeterson]

This sounds absolutely horrible! I'm so sorry you've been going through this.

I've never been able to afford assistive tech hardware, and don't get me started on state organizations' paternalistic attitude toward blind folks needing assistive technology, because my rant would be longer than yours. :) I'm mainly angry at the high prices for assistive tech hardware. I can't believe that, in the year 2019, we still don't have inexpensive braille displays.

As far as assistive tech software is concerned, I think we've advanced a lot in lower prices, though we still have a long way to go. I use the Voice Dream Reader app for reading through text-to-speech, and I use an ordinary e-reader app for reading in large font because, yay, Bookshare offers books in epub now.

But if I were still doing most of my reading in braille, my situation would be just as poor now as it was when I became partially sighted in 2001. And I'm frustrated by the fact that I can't access Open Library's enormous library for the print disabled, because the only assistive tech device that can be used with that library is way too expensive for me.

[kestrell]

First, I apologize for all my typos: being sick is completely fogging my brain.

I agree with all the things you are saying: the price tags on assistive tech are outrageous and, of course, if the gov. would put into developing new cheaper tech for PWD, instead of pushing the overpriced unstable crapware on us, more PWD would have the tech they need, and it would damn well work better.

I am literate in braille, but am not adept enough to use it for long periods of time. Ultimately, this is just as well, though, considering the prices of braille displays. Oh, and the reason I can't read braille very well is that, when people finally figured out I was legally blind in high school, the NY State Commission for the Blind instructor I had asked what I wanted to learn, and I immediately said braille, and she said they didn't teach braille to kids with functional vision because, I quote, I might start using it as a crutch. WTF??
And here is another piece of overpriced assistive tools for blind people: those $50 braille labelers that last maybe a year. I've stopped buying those also.

Alexx, my poor husband, has been trying to keep me together through all this, and was all ready to buy me another assistive tech ebook reader, but I told him I wanted to just get a Windows laptop and start using some fo the free reading programs on Bookshare and such. It will be about another week before I get the laptop, but if there are any reading programs you can recommend, I would appreciate it.

[duskpeterson]

You want to see me truly furious? I'm furious that kids like you were denied the ability to learn braille in school.

How long have you been blind, may I ask? Did it just take a while for people to figure out?

I was really lucky at the time I became partially sighted, virtually overnight; my best friend was blind. Like you, she was denied the opportunity to learn braille, but she was an accessibility consultant, so she had tons of resources on hand. When I told her I wanted to learn braille, she brought me a braille alphabet card, a braille book, and an application to NLS. I taught myself the rules of braille through a website that provided a simple introduction to contracted braille; then I simply started reading a book I borrowed through NLS, looking up any contractions I couldn't remember as I read. It was tough to learn this way, because I quickly discovered that there was no such thing as a braille glossary that lists all the contractions in order, which would allow me to look up an unknown contraction whenever I encountered it in the braille book. So I had to create that glossary myself, using index cards and a slate and stylus. Once I had that glossary on hand, I was able to teach myself to read contracted braille in two weeks. I'm very much out of practice, though!

What I found frustrating back then was that there were all sorts of neat things in contracted braille that didn't exist in non-contracted writing, but nobody talked about them in the way that deaf people talk about the neat things you can do in American Sign Language. The blindness organizations were going on about how braille is important for literacy and obtaining jobs, which is all quite true, but I wanted to talk about blindness culture, and nobody I encountered was discussing that. Well, except for my friend, but we couldn't discuss braille, since she didn't know it.

You asked, "What format is Open Library using?"

DAISY is one of the formats it offers. Its DAISY files that are only available to print-disabled readers are protected with the NLS key and can only be read on Victor Reader Stream. Very frustrating. I wrote to them a couple of years ago about this, and they said that they're trying to come up with a solution to this problem, but they haven't yet.

A similar problem is that HathiTrust (https://www.hathitrust.org) has an enormous library of e-texts that were scanned from books in academic libraries, but the full texts of copyrighted books are currently only available to certain academic institutions and their members. Last I heard, HathiTrust was still trying to figure out a way to make their full texts available to print-disabled readers who don't belong to an academic institution.

Regarding reading programs, it's been a long time since I've used text-to-speech in Windows; I've found it so much easier to use text-to-speech on my iPod Touch. Back when I used Windows for audio, I was using the text-to-speech software TextAloud (http://nextup.com), but it wasn't designed for things like DAISY files. You might try starting with the Windows programs that Bookshare recommends, which you may have already browsed through:

https://www.bookshare.org/cms/reading-tool-wizard/windows-pc

Thanks for the book recommendation! I hadn't known that about paratransit. It reminds me of that trend a few years ago of creating accessible versions of websites that were a dumbed-down version of the full website.

[kestrell]

My medical history is complicated by the fact that I was orphaned when a few months old, so I spent the first few years of my life being shuffled around different extended family groups. At some point, I got sick and had a high fever, which didn't get properly treated, which triggered juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which came with secondary symtoms like iritis, which in turn cascaded into glaucoma and other issues. No one caught it until I was about three, and I was already blind in one eye and mostly blind in the other, thogh my ophthamologist and my guardians didn't tell me how bad it was. Their approach was if they tell me, I wouldn't "act disabled," and when I tried to explain to my eye doctor how hard school was, he got angry and told me I just had to try harder. So finally, I had a claucoma attack that went on for about six months, and a specialist recommended I have the blind eye removed, and that's when the school system finally said, Wow! you have really poor eyesight! Since they wouldn't teach me braille, though, I had vision class every other day for three years and basically only learned to use a typewriter, which I was really bad at because of the arthritis in my hands.
When I lost the last bit of functional vision in my early twenties, the Commission in NY sent a braille teache to my house, but she insisted on using Make Way for Ducklings as my learning text--no infantizing there, right?--and she herself read visually, not by touch, though she did often criticize me for being lazy since I was learning fast enough.
Basically, I have a bunch more of these stories, where someone who claimed to be an expert and didn't know anything about me made poor decisions about what I should do and then lectured me about my attitude when I argued. It makes me really worry about the people who refuse to get any assistance at all because they don't or can't tolerate that level of interference and judgement. I mean, how about people who are queer, or maybe take drugs for pain management, or are maybe not legal citizens? Or they just want to stay off the grid and away from that level of government involvement in their lives.

[duskpeterson]

Yeah, I chose not to jump through the hoops that the State of Maryland placed in front of blind folks who wanted to get a grant to buy assistive technology. They wanted me to get a blindness expert to assess which technology I needed. I was like, "What the heck? I'm a professional writer; I know exactly which equipment I need. Why should I get some so-called expert to say that I need a braille monitor in order to keep editing my writings?" And they wouldn't help me obtain assistive technology for my daily life, only assistive tech that would help me earn money. So I took myself out of the state-assistance system.

As it turned out, the doctors were able to improve my eyesight to the point where I didn't need expensive assistive tech in order to do my work. Well, except for a scanner and OCR program, but friends and family stepped in to supply me with that. At any rate, the state's paternalism left a bad taste in my mouth.

Your case sounds absolutely dreadful! I'm in awe of you for your courage in making it through all of that. I would have gone off and curled up in a corner to whimper for several years in the face of all that.

My situation was sort of the opposite of yours, because my vision loss occurred to me when I was well into adulthood. I always expected that the authorities would automatically step in and help me if I became blind; that's the way it always happened in the books I read as a kid about blind people. But nobody showed up at my doorway or gave me any assistance in navigating the system except my blind friend, bless her. Without her, I don't know what I would have done, because when the vision loss started, I couldn't read even large fonts with my eyes, and I had no assistive technology, so I had no access to the Internet or to any other information on what to do.

[kestrell]

The "no one stepped in" thing happens often but, by law, ophthamologists who have a patient who is legally blind *are* supposed to step in and at least tell them they qualify for services and, if the person wishes it, the ophthamologist is then required to contact that state's Commission for the Blind and start the paperwork so the oph. can do the appropriate verification.

Re my medical and personal history: when I say "Books saved my life," I'm not speaking metaphorically. They're my therapy and my anti-depressant, so you can see why this issue of visually impaired people having access to the tech they need to read is something I feel very passionate about.

[duskpeterson]

Ah, so I just wasn't blind enough to make the assistance alarm bells go off. To his credit, though, my ophthalmologist did certify me as visually impaired when I requested him to, so I was able to sign up for libraries for the blind.

I'm absolutely with you concerning books. I was a writer and insatiable reader, and suddenly I couldn't read books, except audio books, which I didn't much care for. I kept having dreams of going to bookstores or libraries and taking home books, and then I'd wake up and know that I couldn't read any of my thousands of books. I couldn't even read my own stories.

Braille and accessible tech made things so much better, but the first year was tough, because NLS didn't own most of my favorite books; apparently, fat fantasy novels weren't popular items for transcribing into braille or taping as talking books. Bookshare hadn't yet opened, and though my father passed on to me his scanner and OCR program, the scanner was slow and the OCR primitive. And of course there were very few e-books out there.

What saved me was finding fanfic and originalfic at the beginning of 2002. Suddenly I had a large body of fiction to read once more.

[kestrell]

I just read this on Cool Blind Tech: are you already aware of the new Voice Dream scanner?

https://coolblindtech.com/voice-dream-scanner-now-available-for-ios/

[duskpeterson]

Yes, I got an email from Voice Dream itself about their new scanner. It's very exciting news; I use Voice Dream's other apps daily.

[kestrell]

Does this software only work with iOS? I've tried ABBY Fine scanner software and it's really complicated--I would love a simple, inexpensive scanner program.

[duskpeterson]

Voice Dream Scanner is only available in iOS, I'm afraid. There are various free scanning and OCR programs for Windows; Microsoft has some built in. One website I found mentions a Microsoft program called Office Lens. It says, "Office Lens (Windows 10 and Office 365): Use document camera to capture image of printed page directly into Microsoft Word, OneNote, or OneDrive; then use Immersive Reader (part of Learning Tools) to read aloud."

End quote. However, if you find as you're developing your plans that you're drawn to iOS programs, you might consider getting an iPod Touch to supplement your new laptop. Like all Apple computers, the iPod Touch has a built-in screen reader. The iPod Touch doesn't last forever, because its battery can't be replaced, but the 32 gigabyte version only costs $200, which is cheap by Apple standards.

I would never give up my laptop; it's so useful for writing. But I find that mobile devices are a lot handier for e-reading, because one can carry mobile devices around the house and even outside the house. I do a lot of e-reading while I'm doing housework, or when I'm curled up in a papasan, or when I'm in bed while I'm sick. I couldn't easily do any of that if I only owned a laptop.

[kestrell]

Thank you for the info! My new Del Windows laptop arrived yesterday, and Alexx installed the programs I use on it, so now it's sitting here in front of me, ready to go. It looks almost identical to a Mac Air in size, shape, and surface texture (matte metal). I also decided to replace my Android phone, which hasn't let me access my received text messages for over a month, with an iPhone, hopefully the basic SE model. The Hadley School has an extensive series of highly detailed instructional videos to familiarize oneself with the iPhone and it's features, so that looks doable. And there seems to be every kind of accessible reading app for the iPhone, unlike Android. Hopefully, all of this will give me more options for reading and accessing books.

[duskpeterson]

I'm so glad to hear that you're able to get both a laptop and an iPhone! I look forward to hearing how they go for you.

[kestrell]

What format is Open Library using?

Also, I highly recommend this book I've been reading that I found on Bookshare: Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (2018) by Bess Williamson. It starts right after WW2, but while reading it, I realized that we are still having the same struggles and the same debates. The government wants to tell the disabled people how to "overcome" their disabilities, andhas to take the paternalistic stance because PWD don't really understand what they need. The gov. insists on handing out shoddy equipment to PWD, instead of letting PWD make their own choices. So much of the gov. issued stuff is crap, that PWD have been hacking their own tools from the beginning. Paratransit was a gove.-invented solution that got signed in by Ronald Reagan because adapting public transportation was too much of a burden on the automobile companies that make mass transit buses. Seriously, none of this is new.