The accessibility of e-books is almost the hottest topic at
disability-education-disability conferences. Because it is new, most of us
don't know nearly enough about it. We don't know how it impacts our
students, and we don't know what re the future prospects for accessibility.
EASI provided a very popular Webinar on the accessibility of e-book formats
a month ago, and you will want to see its slides and watch its recording.
Go to:
http://easi.cc/archive/e-readers/resources.htm
EASI Webinars can help you with valuable, interesting and exciting
information in our Webinars in the next 2-3 months.
Webinars scheduled during April, May and June will cover how people with
disabilities can read a growing number of e-books and give a good
introduction on how to author accessible e-books. The authoring tools will
cover those aimed at a beginning single person wanting a couple accessible
e-books and slightly more complex authoring tools for creating larger
numbers of books and those with more complex format issues.
HAVE NO FEAR! YOU TOO CAN DO IT!
Three of the 5 Webinars will cover reading and authoring applications for
DAISY books The other 2 Webinars will deal more with the epub format and
with converting some of the specialized document formats used by some
commercial providers of e-books and e-book readers.
I can't urge you too strongly to take a serious look at attending these or
at least getting their recordings. We are on the cutting edge of the
coming e-book wave. Grab the wave and take the ride!!!
The EASI 4-part, fee-based Series: Better E-books with DAISY EPUB and More
is scheduled for:
April 10 and 17; May 1 and 8
Times all daylight saving: 11 AM Pacific, noon Mountain, 1 PM Central and 2
PM Eastern
Weeks 1-2, (April 10 and 17), will focus on the DAISY authoring and reading
products developed by Dolphin.
Presenter: Jeff Bazer from Dolphin Computer Access in the US.
Jeff will discuss EASY Converter, EASY Producer, and Easy Reader which
now will read both DAISY and EPUB content.
The buzz is that the epub 3 standard will be highly compatible with the
DAISY format. We can expect authoring tools to handle both formats in the
near future. Most hardware DAISY players now will handle books in epub2.
Week 3, May 1: Overview of the epub and other e-document formats being used
by publishers of e-books
Presenter: Norm Coombs CEO of EASI, Professor Emeritus from RIT
This Webinar will give an introduction to common document formats
publishers are using for e-books including books for the Kindle, Nook, Blio
and Adobe Digital editions. It will suggest ways that these proprietary
formats may be converted to other formats and avoid being reader specific.
It will point to tools that will enable writers to authorbooks in the
epub format and tools to facilitate changing documents from one
Week 4, May 8: Will demonstrate the add-in which will save Word Documents
as DAISY Content
Presenter: Craig Mill, Assistive Technology Advisor at CALL Scotland
(Communication, Access, Literacy and Learning)
This free add-in for Microsoft Word has been available for a few years,
but it is being constantly simplified and improved. For example, it now
handles accessible Math. The presentation will include YouTube videos Mill
created to walk users through the process of making personal DAISY content.
EASI Annual Members can register free for the series from
http://easi.cc/member/index.htn where you will need your member username
and password. We need your registration so we can send participants email
updates and log in information
There are some scholarships available at:
http://easi.cc/scholarship.htm
Non-members can register and pay the $225 registration for this 4-part
series. You can pay by credit card, check or PO at the link below and
select Web conferences and select the date for April 4.
https://www.secure.servsite.com/easi/enrollment/enrollment_pal.shtml
EASI Free 1-hour Webinar: The Cutting Edge of E-book Accessibility
June 11: 11 PM Pacific, Noon Mountain, 1 PM Central and 2 PM Eastern daylight
Presenter: Norm Coombs, Ph.D. CEO EASI, Professor Emeritus RIT
The explosion of e-books is changing the face of book publishing and
changing the role of book stores. Different vendors of e-books created
their unique, proprietary document formats which required their being read
in e-readers designed specifically for that format. Imagine having to use
different glasses to read print books depending on who was its publisher!
Of course, the document format and the specialized e-readers were
inaccessible to many people with what used to be called "print
disabilities". The DAISY document format opened up a wider and richer
reading experience for people with disabilities, but DAISY books were
incompatible with commercial e-readers like the Kindle or Nook, and
commercial e-book formats were incompatible with DAISY.
Webinar participants will learn which formats are already accessible to
them, and they will be introduced to some tools for document format conversion.
Everyone can use the link below to register for this free Webinar:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEFRVmhpOGFlTVN5T09ScWREeDdsVWc6MQ"
The page with the schedule of all currently scheduled Webinars is at
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It's never too late to become what you might have been. George Eliot
Once you choose hope, anything's possible. Christopher Reeve
Norman Coombs [log in to unmask]
Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students
with Disabilities by Norman Coombs published by Jossey-Bass Oct 10,2010
http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470499044.html
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Check out EASI New Synchronous Clinics:
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm
EASI Home Page http://www.rit.edu/~easi
Online courses and Clinics http://easi.cc/workshop.htm
Check the EASI Library Web http://www.rit.edu/~easi/lib.htm
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