I think that scanning a textbook works very well, as you don't really care
about having good narration that you would find on a tape.
Sharon

----- Original Message -----
From: Yazak, Sharon <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2001 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: Books on Tape


> I scanned a book for a student who was blind who was taking a distance
> learning course and e-mailed it to him chapter by chapter.  He said that
it
> was the best access he had ever had to a book. (He used JAWs to read it.)
> He deleted the material after the course was over.
>
> I agree that tapes are unwieldy.
>
> Sharon Yazak, Coordinator
> Disability Support Services
> Academic Support Center
> Montana State University-Billings
> Billings MT 59101
> (406) 657-2283 v/t
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Chapin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2001 7:06 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Books on Tape
>
>
> I'd like to thank everybody who responded.  I found it very useful.
>
> Let me put my question in context so you can see where I'm coming from.
Last
> semester we started a pilot project to provide course material to a blind
> student in electronic form rather than creating tapes.  The materials are
> either articles or sections of books.  There wasn't a single "textbook" in
> the group.  We've had student workers scan in the material, do some basic
> editing and then create a link from an electronic version of the course
> syllabus to the readings.  The student, who uses JAWS, can then access the
> material from her system with all the nice navigation features that JAWS
> gives you such as the ability to jump forward by paragraph and the like.
> We're still working the bugs out of the system but so far our test student
> is excited by the results.
>
> This March I'm suppose to do a presentation at the NERCOMP meeting on this
> project.  I would like to be able to talk briefly about the advantages and
> disadvantages of doing this over using tapes.  My impression is that even
> with tone indexing, finding particular pages or passages can take some
time
> with a tape, or have I missed understood?
>
> In general, would you rather get course material in electronic form to use
> with a screen reader or on tape?
>
>
> Paul Chapin
> Curricular Computing Specialist
> Amherst College
> 413 542-2144
>