Book Share: Short User Guide

Transcription

1 Book Share: Short User Guide Mada Assistive Technology Center Tel: Fax:

2 Contents How to use your Bookshare account and download Books. What is Bookshare? 4 To Search for books 4 Error! Bookmark not defined. Browsing for books... 4 Downloading Books... 5 Choosing a download format 5 Daisy format 5 Braille Ready Format 5 Downloading a Book... 5 Bookshare A User Guide P a g e 2

3 How to use your Bookshare account and download Books. Bookshare A User Guide P a g e 3

4 What is Bookshare? Bookshare provides the world s largest online library of accessible reading materials for people with print disabilities. Free membership is given to users of MADA Qatar Assistive Technology Center who have print disabilities. This includes not only people who are blind or have visual difficulties, but also those with reading difficulties such as dyslexia. Bookshare offers unlimited access to accessible books, textbooks newspapers and magazines. For further information regarding setting up or registering an account, contact the MADA Qatar Assistive Technology Center where any of the staff can assist you with this. To Search for books First of all you have to log in follow the steps below; the instructions are detailed to assist those using a screen reader to navigate websites. Step 1: First launch you Internet Browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc.) and type in the following address Step 2 Tab until you hear edit and enter your address Step 3 Tab until you hear password and enter your password then tab to log in button and enter Step 4. Tab till you hear search for books this is where you can put in the book you wish to download. You can enter a title, author s name, publisher, or ISBN number in order to find the book then tab and press enter on the search button Step 4. You can choose if you want the search presented in table view or list view Step 5 you can modify how you wish the results sorted by author title and how many results per page you want displayed. Step 6. If there are many books in the search results you can move to next page by entering on the next button. For users without a visual impairment simply follow the steps above, using your mouse to assist your navigation. Browsing for books Step 1.Enter on the browse button (use insert f7 if using a screen reader to look at headings used for browse options) use the Down Arrow key to move through the list of different categories for searching Step 2. A list of categories will be displayed use the Down Arrow key to choose category you wish to browse in Step 3. Enter on category you are interested in. jstep 4 Use the Down Arrow key to read books Bookshare A User Guide P a g e 4

5 You can modify your search and look for books according to grade by entering on grade link in browse options or just look for new books by entering on the new books link in browse options. Downloading Books Choosing a download format You can download files from Bookshare in different formats. Daisy format which is short for Digital accessible information system, Brf. Files which stands for Braille ready format, HTML Hypertext transfer mark up language and /or Txt format which stands for Text format. Daisy format The most common format for downloading books is the Daisy format. You will need a software reading tool in order to read Daisy books. You can download one of the free daisy readers from the reading tools page of Bookshare. The readers available to download from bookshare are the Victor reader and Readout loud reader. You can also convert daisy files to mp3 files but will need a software converter package to do this. Braille Ready Format Brf This format is used for reading books on Braille note takers and refreshable Braille displays. However most Braille notetakers now have a daisy reader installed which means you can download in the Daisy format. However if you need books in embossed Braille, Bookshare advises that you download the book in the Daisy format as this makes for an easier conversion to embossed Braille. Many of the freely distributable books are available in HTML and text only formats. Downloading a Book Once you have found a book you wish to download you can tab over the formats and enter on the format you wish to download in. The books will be downloaded in the standard zipped compressed format and will need to be unzipped before you can read the books. Bookshare recommends that you keep a separate folder on your PC or laptop for your downloaded books. If books are not freely available you will need to provide your password before being allowed to download the book. Once you have downloaded the book and unzipped the file it is ready to be opened by any of the access technologies (software or hardware) you use for example Read and Write Gold, Kurtzweil 3000, Daisy Players etc. Bookshare A User Guide P a g e 5

6 Further Information For more details regarding Bookshare, setting up accounts, different reading devices and software, contact or call in to the MADA Center where staff will be happy to assist you. The Center can provide demonstrations of the different reading devices and explore the reading solution that individually suits you. For further information contact the MADA Qatar Assistive Technology Center, 7 th Floor, Al Nasr Tower B, Al Corniche Road, West Bay, Doha, Qatar. P.O. Box Ph: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. We request attribution to Mada and all other authors of original materials is retained Bookshare A User Guide P a g e 6

7 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. We request attribution to Mada and all other authors of original materials is retained