Hi Everyone,

The January issue of AccessWorld, now a free, web-only magazine, includes
the article: "Read Me, Read Me Not: A Review of Four DAISY Book Players."
We evaluated the Victor Reader Classic Plus and Victor Reader Vibe from
VisuAide, the Telex Scholar, and Plextor's Plextalk PTR1 player/recorder.

You can read the article at:
http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw050104.

Our tests showed that the Vibe is far superior to the Scholar. The Classic
Plus is the choice for a full-featured player. The PTR1 can also record,
and it is much more expensive.

We will review the Book Port and Book Courrier in a future issue.


Jay Leventhal
Editor in Chief, AccessWorld

At 06:57 PM 2/2/2004 -0800, Lori Bell wrote:
>TAP Information Services and Mid-Illinois Talking Book
>Center have completed a critical analysis and
>evaluation of portable audio devices intended
>primarily for use by the print-impaired to access and
>enjoy digital talking books.
>
>Five devices were examined and reviewed: The Victor
>Reader Classic Plus and the Victor Reader Vibe from
>Visuaide, the Scholar from Telex Communications, the
>BookCourier from Springer Design, and the Book Port
>from the American Printing House for the Blind.
>
>Among the five devices reviewed at least three
>lineages are discernable. The Victor Reader Vibe and
>the Telex Scholar are descendants of portable CD
>players that have been on the consumer market for
>years. Their hardware and software designs have been
>enhanced to make them more accessible by and useful to
>print-impaired users. The Book Port and BookCourier
>are siblings in the large, raucous family of digital
>playback devices that contain no moving parts and use
>flash memory. The Victor Classic Plus, on the other
>hand, seems to be designedly descended from the analog
>audiocassette playback device used by print-impaired
>users in the U.S. for decades.
>
>All five devices were fairly easy to install and begin
>using. Overall, the Book Port seemed to be a better
>device than the BookCourier, and the Victor Vibe
>seemed to be better than the Telex Scholar. Because
>of the various design lineages, however, it is very
>difficult to select a best device from the three
>finalists: Victor Classic Plus, Victor Vibe, and Book
>Port.
>
>Recommendations include: the need to intermingle the
>three design paradigms, perhaps incorporating more PDA
>functionality as well; the need to standardize the
>design of the keys a bit; and the need for greater
>accessibility to more file formats on a single device,
>including proprietary file formats.
>
>The complete text of the report is available on the
>MITBC website at
>http://www.mitbc.org/projecthalfinal.doc.
>
>The Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center (www.mitbc.org)
>is a sub-regional library serving the blind and
>physically challenged in central and northwest
>Illinois. A talking book center provides library
>services via toll-free telephone and U.S. mail. Books
>and magazines in Braille and audiocassette formats are
>available to readers enrolled in the program. MITBC
>is part of a statewide network administered by the
>Illinois State Library, a division of the Office of
>the Illinois Secretary of State. The statewide
>network is tied to a national network under the
>administration of the National Library Service for the
>Blind and Physically Handicapped, a division of the
>Library of Congress.
>
>TAP Information Services provides a wide variety of
>services supporting libraries, consortia, government
>agencies, museums, publishers, and other organizations
>in the information industry. Services include:
>support for projects, research reports, strategic
>planning, workshops, writing and editing, conference
>services, consortial negotiations and agreements, and
>speeches.
>
>For more information about this report, please contact
>either Tom Peters at [log in to unmask] or Lori
>Bell at [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
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>
>
>VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html