The Night Light Monthly newsletter with tech tips for teachers of the visually impaired By Mary Fran Anderson and Scott McCallum.

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1 December 2012 BVIS website: Happy Holidays Everyone BVIS Update Special points of interest: Contact info: BVIS website contains new information and photos from Goalball Tournament e/oregonbvis/home Bookshare update Some facts about NIMAC-sourced textbooks: Tech Blog : Located on the website Find additional resources under resource link on the website They are only available for U.S. K-12 students with print disabilities as defined in the Chafee Amendment to copyright law, and who have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) issued by a public education agency. Only teachers and staff members of U.S. K-12 education agencies can download NIMAC-sourced textbooks. NIMAC-sourced textbooks cannot be downloaded by students with individual accounts. If you are using an organizational account to access NIMAC-sourced textbooks, make sure that you log out of the organizational account on your student s ipad once the book is downloaded. Inside this issue: Bookshare 1 IPADS 2 IPADS 3 OAKS TRAINING 4 GOALBALL 5 SHARING 6 What are NIMAC-sourced textbooks? Publishers submit NIMAS files for their new textbooks to the NIMAC repository. When requested to do so by a States Authorized User, the NIMAC assigns (or sends) the NIMAS textbook file to an Accessible Media Producer (AMP) Bookshare (an AMP) takes raw NIMAS files and converts them to student-ready DAISY and Braille-ready file (BRF) formats. K-12 school districts may download the DAISY or BRF versions of these NIMACsourced Textbooks from Bookshare.org for use by Chafee qualified students with an IEP. 1

2 BVIS Update (continued) ipad App New App 1. Braille Sonar $2.99 By Mary Beth Harvish Description This App allows for the lookup of Grade 2 Braille symbols, and Nemeth Code. You can search either by dots you see on the page or by the English Abbreviation you are searching for or punctuation. The App is intended to be used as a reference and does not function as a full translation tool. Having trouble recalling a Braille contraction or the use of a specific symbol? This is the App for you! This App contains access to a database of nearly 500 Braille symbols, contractions, and commonly misconstrued symbols. The symbols are based on standards established by the Braille Authority of North America (BANA). Those with visual impairments will find the App has been especially crafted for use with Apple s VoiceOver accessibility technology. Review of Apps 2. Scanner Pro $6.99 By Readdle Description Scanner Pro transforms your iphone and ipad into portable scanners. It allows you to scan receipts, whiteboards, paper notes, or any multipage document. Scanned documents can be ed and printed, uploaded to Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote, or simply saved on the iphone and ipad. The application incorporates special algorithms that remove shadows, make scans sharper, correct perspective and make them as readable as possible. Review: I found this app very easy to use. If you combine this App with either the Notes Plus App or the Notability App, you can take a photo with your device while in Scanner Pro. Scanner Pro converts the photo into a PDF. The PDF can then be opened in either Notes Plus or Notability and the pencil tool can be used to circle the answers. 2

3 BVIS Update (continued) ipad App Review (continued) Text Detective $1.99 By Blindsight Description Text Detective finds and reads text in printed documents within seconds using your iphone s camera. The detected text can easily be read, edited, copied and pasted into documents, s or other apps. It stores all the scanned text in a history, which allows you to refer to it later. Every step is accessible. NOTE: This app has to be used by holding the ipad in landscape mode. Review: The Text Detective App was not as accurate as I had hoped. Material has to be edited after it is scanned. It s also hard to see how to position the document you are interested in scanning until the scan begins. In addition, if text is structured into columns and paragraphs (e.g. menus, newspaper articles, etc) Text Detective reads the words line by line from left to right. It does not recognize paragraphs of text. Blindsight said they are working on this feature. Prizmo $9.99 By Creaceed Prizmo lets you scan and recognize text documents, business cards, bills, and whiteboards. You can share the results across your computers and with other people through the Cloud. Prizmo uses state of the art technologies. It has highly accurate OCR, has speech-operated shooting, and has intelligent document interpretation to achieve these goals. Review: Prizmo is very easy to use. It allows you to scan text, business cards, bills, whiteboards and you can purchase voices or use VoiceOver to read your scanned material. It works well with VoiceOver. It is easy to edit mistakes that may have occurred during scanning. It appears to scan more accurately when the text is positioned approx. 7 inches from the ipad. I liked Prizmo better than Text Detective, even though Text Detective was specifically designed for the visually impaired. I just felt that Prizmo was more accurate and easy to use. 3

4 BVIS Update (continued) OAKS Online Braille Interface Training for Teachers of the Visually Impaired and Test Administrators Any individual administering OAKS Online through the Braille interface is required to participate in the ODE -provided OAKS Online Braille Interface Training. The OAKS Online Braille Interface Training will prepare Teachers of the Visually Impaired to set up and administer OAKS Online using the Braille interface and supporting Braille technologies (JAWS 12 or 13 Screen Reader, Duxbury Braille translation software, refreshable Braille display and embosser). In partnership with the Blind and Visually Impaired Student Fund and NWRESD, ODE will provide six on-site trainings for the school year: January 7, 2013 Columbia Regional 8:30-12:30 January 8, 2013 NWRESD/Eastern 8:30-12:30 January 9, 2013 Lane 12:30-4:30 January 11, 2013 WESD/Cascade 12:30-4:30 January 15, 2013 Southern 8:30-12:30 January 17, 2013 Central 8:30-12:30 NOTE: All TA s preparing to administer OAKS Testing online with Braille need to obtain security training from the district where the student is being tested. If your district serves students who will test using the Braille Interface of OAKS Online and plans to begin testing prior to January 7, please contact Scott McCallum at Northwest Regional ESD ( or smccallum@nwresd.k12.or.us ) to arrange an alternative training session for the teacher of the visually impaired that serves your district. Holly Carter Assessment Policy Analyst Office of Assessment and Information Systems Oregon Department of Education Phone: holly.carter@state.or.us 4

5 GOALBALL TOURNAMENT Mark your calendar for the upcoming Oregon State Goalball Tournament on March 1, 2013 in Canby Oregon at Baker Prairie Middle School. This year there will be goals and 4 referee s from the United States Association of Blind Athletes. What s new with NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access) For those of you who do not know what NVDA is, it is a free screen reader which is similar in a lot of ways to JAWS because the developers of NVDA were originally the developers of scripts for JAWS. The keystrokes are similar to JAWS and according to students, it is a little easier to use than JAWS. Here s what s new: It can be run off of a USB key and it doesn t need to be installed onto the computer. According to the developers, NVDA is the only screen reader to work with Windows 8 using the touch screen format as well as Internet Explorer 10. NVDA does not support PowerPoint yet, but in the next release it will support it. If you would like more information on NVDA, take a look at the following websites: 5

6 SHARING Please me at if you have anything that you would like to share. We are interested in ideas, achievements, events or anything of interest from all the regional programs around the state. 6