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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2022 - 07 - 08 - ID#vuinbs
11
tips on reading books? (self.Blind)
submitted by BlindWizard
Does anyone have any tips on reading books when you're blind? There are a lot of great pieces of knowledge that are not available through audio or PDF and only available in print paperback. The only approach I've seen is to use a screen reader on your phone

Does anyone have any other tips or suggestions or suggested apps? I have the Google Pixel 6
BaBaBroke 3 points 1y ago
American printing house for the blind may have books.
BARD is an app with the National library service. You can download books and magazines and listen to them.
The National Federation for the Blind nfb for short has nfb newsline with audio newspapers, TV listings, weather alerts with an app on apple or a phone number for others with prompts to access what they have. Both are free. Check with your local library for bard info and nfb.org for newsline.
There are numerous products with optical character recognition that read to you, like the Orcam or Envision that are or attach to eyeglasses that even do facial recognition or tell you what is in front of you.
The are closed circuit televisions, cctv for short that invert and enlarge print and can even read to you. For low vision there is a headset by Patriot that you can invert and enlarge with and will outline objects on a surface like a drawing so you can find the object easier. I believe it also can read to you and is rechargeable.
Most of the cctv take up alot of space on a table or desk. Some ne are more portable than others and may have a rechargable battery. I saw one by Vispero that is just a camera on a stand that you can connect to a tv or computer, folds up and has a battery. Some can cast so you don't have wires to trip over.
Your state blind commission may have some of these that you can try out. You can join the NFB and attend a convention in your state or national convention and check out the vendors there. There are also talks on all kinds of subjects relating to blindness, social security disability, careers, sports, accessibility for tech and jobs, Google,Amazon, target aira and others.
I will say the tech stuff is not cheap. I saw average prices around two thousand dollars and up. There are discounted prices at the convention.
Edit for spelling and info.
SiriuslyGranger 2 points 1y ago
Ocr is the solution here. Scan the book. The best solution is honestly to scan it with a traditional flat bed scanner or document scanners. And if you want to do a book it’s honestly much better to do it on a computer because on a phone it doesn’t have enough power to do something like this. And the accuracy is lower. I still find flatbed scanners to be the most reliable consistently, have the most power and capability. That’s the solution I would use.

There are plenty of ocr softwares on the computer, but I would never use them to ocr an entire book. Lineing stuff up and making sure they are accurate is significantly more difficult on such devices. The most accurate results are done with a traditional flat bed scanners. If you’re going to scan a lot then a heavy duty one will be a good investment.

I’ve tried it on the phone too and the phone overheats the app crashes a lot and just things don’t work very well. The phone is not designed to scan a large capacity. A traditional even heavy duty laptop or desktop will do the trick. Have at least 8 or 16 gb of ram. And a good processor.

Abby fine reader is the most mainstream. The mack and windows has docuscan.

The most specialized softwares but the most expensive but the absolute best and if you want to read books the best investment is k1000 or kurtzweil 1000 or open book.

I have actually scanned in a good handful of books myself.
[deleted] 1 points 1y ago
There are a bunch of great suggestions here. I am going to add BookShare. This is a website in part funded by the Dept. of Education with some 1.2 million books in accessible formats (e.g., Word, DAISY, BRF). It started and still focuses on academic material, but its catelogue has a good variety of fiction and non-fiction books that are not textbooks. If you really want a title, especially a non-fiction one, you can request BookShare to scan it for you. And yes, you can also just scan it in yourself and submit it to BookShare. The only potential issue is that for non-students, BookShare has a $50 annual subscription cost, but I think it is worth it. I have downloaded a few books for work.
BlindBard21 1 points 1y ago
Is there a way to upload the book yourself to bookshare? If so, how do you go about doing that? I tried to send a request to them once, but apparently they couldn't do that because of copyright laws or something. Not sure if I was doing something wrong when I was attempting to do that though, so any help would be appreciated.
B_Bussen 1 points 1y ago
On the same topic, is anyone using book share? I just signed up and not sure what format to use. I'm getting a book from them that lists 45 records over many years and I want to be able to search the book. Suggestions?
SiriuslyGranger 1 points 1y ago
Yes, I am, epub can be nice so can brf depends on how you want to search it.
B_Bussen 1 points 1y ago
I read a lot of books on kindle.
DHamlinMusic 1 points 1y ago
Most if not all ebook apps are compatible with Talkback or for those iOS users reading this Voiceover, I personally have a seperete Kindle paperwhite device that is my "book" and I have a specific set of earbuds that are paired with only that.
PrincessDie123 1 points 1y ago
I got an OrCam device, it’s really expensive but it works really well, it’s a handheld OCR device, there are different options for different needs mine is the handheld one for low vision and dyslexia type issues. It has trouble with certain fonts but it’s the best one I’ve tried so far and it can read full pages and documents or be switched to reading only point and click snippets.
potato_rock_bandit 1 points 1y ago
I don't have anything for using an Android app, sorry, but know some other ways. Maybe they will help?

An online friend of mine lost all of his vision quickly in his mid 30s. He really values the experience of reading a book, holding it in his hands, turning the pages, etc, it was important to him. He wound up with an OrCam My Eye being gifted to him through his specialist's office, perhaps a grant on their end? It's a device a little larger than a lighter that mounts onto the side of glasses magnetically and has on board optical character recognition and you can navigate with finger points and hand gestures. He was able to speak with another user of the device who also used it for book reading and had been doing so for over six years, the device is robust. At the very least you can know you're in good company as a visually impaired person, or VIP, who enjoys traditional book reading. It has multiple language support, I think they've also added voice controls to it in a more recent update. It also has bluetooth if a person doesn't want to be limited to the onboard speaker.

Sam at The Blind Life has featured a document camera by a company named IPEVO, I have the VZ-K which has wifi connectivity. The camera is on am arm that has three articulation points, when folded down the camera and stand are about the dimension from my elbow to the end of my fist; if you are more powerfully built than me it might go from your elbow on the table to your wrist. The hingest are awesome, easy to adjust and stay put so once you find a way to get your book to lay flat it's just a matter of taking a photo. The company has their own software called Visualiser, last time I got it it was free in the Google Play store. The device is good quality and multi-function, I also use it to livestream, record videos, and work with more detailed things at a set distance and display it on my giant monitor.

Reading from a traditional book is more challenging for me now and I've shifted the bulk of my consumtpion over to audio, but I've still got some books on specific topics that are very localised for me, so I can relate to your post. I hope I was able to help, and that you find directly helpful responses here. :)
thatawkwardcosplayer 1 points 1y ago
Google has an option for text into word doc! It’s normally shown with students uploading notes but it absolutely works for regular books as well!
BlindWizard [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Would that be Google lens or another application?
thatawkwardcosplayer 1 points 1y ago
I think it’s google lens!
DHamlinMusic 1 points 1y ago
Probably Google Lookout actually.
DeeDeegc 1 points 1y ago
They have a lot of tools these days. I've been doing some shopping myself because I love reading and bought books often but when my vision failed I had to switch to audio. This tool looked promising for a portable option. They're always working on stuff.
ReaderPen/C-Pen/Reading Support/Human Reader Alternative/Classroom aid https://a.co/d/cNYIx8h
retrolental_morose 1 points 1y ago
Before I had Kindle, I used to scan paperbacks in with a flatbed scanner. There are document cameras now that do the same job.
BlindWizard [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Is there an app for that or is it a piece of equipment I would buy?
retrolental_morose 1 points 1y ago
There are probably a number of OCR apps for Android, although the issue is more physically lining up the book with the camera and such. A document camera - in terms of actual hardware - will generally have a stand or something to place the book under the lens.
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