Hi, It sounds like you have already gone the route of BookShare, NLS and RFB&D, so now it is time to check out public sources such as Audible, Amazon, Borders, and others by doing a Google search for audio books. Of course there is a very good chance that none of these public sources have what you need either.
Have you talked to your university to see if they have services to either obtain the books from the publisher or scan them into a file for you. Yes, it needs to be the university to contact the publisher, and not the student. If you have a sheet scanner and something like OpenBook or Kurzweil, you can scan them in yourself. Places like Kinko's or office supply stores can cut the binding off so that you can use the sheet feeder. When you are done scanning the book they can put a comb binding on the book to keep the printed pages together in case you need to refer back to the printed book for pictures, tables, charts, etc. I think that some of these places also scan documents into an electronic file, but I do not know what file options you would have. If you do not own OCR software you might want to check out the reasonably priced products by Premier Software at URL readingmadeeasy.com (That is reading made easy, without spaces between the words) or Abby Fine available at most local computer supply stores. There are service providers around the country who scan books in for a fee which some rehabilitation agencies will pay for. You can always resort back to how we did it last century, have a person read the book into a recording. I'm sure you do not even own a cassette recorder, but digital recorders can do the same job. Some digital recorders have the ability to put an index marker in the recording for easy navigation. These marks can be used to indicate the start of chapters or sections. The reading assignments can be read into separate files in the order of their due date. These files can be downloaded to a computer and e-mailed to you or burned to a CD. Retired school teachers and professors are often willing to volunteer their time to read textbooks. Churches are another good source for finding volunteer readers. Due to the amount of time and effort that goes into obtaining accessible textbooks, you have to start working on it the semester before. Hope you find this info helpful. Annette -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of scott Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 5:07 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Blind-Computing] audio text books Does anyone know a resource for audio text books? I am going for my graduate degree and need audio text books I do know of RFBD.org they don't have the books I am looking for Looking for some other resources For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5689 (20101209) __________ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5689 (20101209) __________ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5691 (20101210) __________ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5691 (20101210) __________ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
