Accessibility Services

AEBC Vision Assistive Technology and Community Support Exhibition 2013

The 2013 Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians (AEBC) Conference will take place from Friday, April 26th to Sunday, April 28th at the Cambridge Suites Hotel, downtown Toronto. 

On Friday, from 10am - 4pm, displays from various vendors, organizations, social groups and service providers will be set up for the public and members. Several presentations and workshops are also scheduled.

This FREE public event will appeal to a wide range of individuals:

• People and families affected by vision loss
• Consumers looking for information about service providers, products and services in the area of vision loss
• Organizations working to remove access barriers to employees or customers with vision loss
• Teachers, students and parents looking for adaptive solutions in the education setting
• Anyone who is interested in the areas of access, inclusion, blindness, independent living, or caregiving

Nineteen exhibitors will be displaying their products and services, and there will be eight scheduled breakout presentations during the day.

Technologies on display include:

• Screen magnification software
• Screen readers
• Electronic video magnifiers (CCTVs)
• Portable magnifiers
• Text scanning solutions
• DAISY digital book readers
• Braille and talking notetakers
• Refreshable Braille displays
• Braille embossers
• Portable GPS
• Talking cell phone solutions
• Daily living aids and more!

Of course, Toronto Public Library will have an information table at Friday's event.

What a fabulous opportunity to see so many products, service clubs and agencies in the same place at the same time!

Details:

Friday April 26th, 2013
10am to 4:00pm
Cambridge Suites Hotel
15 Richmond Street East, Toronto
2nd Floor

Don't miss it! 

 

 

Adaptive Technology: Kurzweil 1000 and 3000 at the Library

Kurzweil 1000 and 3000 software is available to use at the Toronto Public Library.

Kurzweil is software designed to help people with disabilities. Kurzweil 1000 is used by people who are blind or have low vision. Kurzweil 3000 helps people who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia or dysgraphia, and who therefore find it hard to read print or electronic materials on their own. (It also is used by literacy students and English as a second language learners.)

Kurzweil software converts a scanned paper document into electronic form. The document is shown on the screen and read aloud by the program.

Some of the features of the Kurzweil 3000 include:

• A talking word processor
• Text read by word, phrase or sentence
• Translations of words
• Many different dictionary options
• Highlighting and notetaking tools
• Talking spellchecker

The Library's version of Kurzweil 3000 is 13.10, and is currently available at the Toronto Reference Library.

Most people who use the Kurzweil program at the Library already are familiar with it. Although the Library does not train people on this software, if you have not used Kurzweil and want to come in and use or explore it, we will gladly help you get signed on. Also, the short film "How to Work With Kurzweil 3000" will introduce you to its main features. 

Please book ahead to make sure that the computer is free before you come! Call the Access desk at 416-393-7161.

 

 

 

 

ZoomText New User Video

As promised in the last Accessibility Services post, here is more information about ZoomText magnification software.

AI Squared, the company that produces ZoomText, has posted some recorded training webinars on its site. For those of you new to the software, the ZoomText New User Introduction Webinar will certainly help get you started!

The first video below is the webinar in 2x magnification. The second is the same webinar at 4x magnification.

Note that the video covers both ZoomText Magnifier and ZoomText Magnifier/Reader. The Library has the Magnifier Software only, so you'll want to concentrate on that section of the video.

Have a look!

 

 

 

Have you used ZoomText at the library or at home? Do you have any tips or suggestions for other users? 

 

More About Zoomtext Magnifier

Zoomtext Magnifier, software available at the Toronto Public Library, is of great help to people with low vision. The Library now has Zoomtext Magnifier Version 10.

An earlier blog post by a colleague of mine gave a basic outline of the software and where it is located in TPL. As she mentions, software is available on one computer in all branches. Toronto Reference Library has the software loaded on several of its computers. 

Here are some of the things Zoomtext can do for you:

Window Views

On Zoomtext, you can choose from several different window views. Some examples:

• Overlay View will magnify the entire desktop.
• Line View magnifies one line of text at a time. This is best used while looking at a document. 
• Docked View enlarges one half of the screen (top, bottom, left or right). 
• Freeze Window allows a part of the screen that would normally be out of view because of the magnification to be visible at all times.

Enhancements

• Invert Brightness inverts white and black values on the screen - for example, black type on a white background becomes white type on a black background. The higher contrast makes the page easier to read.
• Reverse Video inverts colours - again, this increases the contrast.
• Point Enhancement allows you to more easily locate your pointer on the screen. For instance, you can ask the program for a red arrow in a red circle, or a giant green arrow (there are other choices too).
• Cursor Enhancement makes the blinking text cursor easier to read onscreen.  

There is a lot more to Zoomtext. Stay tuned!

Finding Closed Captioned Materials In The Library Catalogue

Closed captioned films have words that can be seen with a closed captioned decoder or with a built-in decoder on newer televisions*.

What is the difference between closed captioning and subtitles? There is a good article in the Examiner.com called Closed Captioning Vs. Subtitles - And what You Should Know about this. The author, Marilyn Sparks, explains that subtitles provide the words that are being spoken, while closed captioning provides much more:

"Films often use sound to convey actions or events that happen off camera, such as screaming, crashes, telephones ringing, knocks on doors, music playing etc. These descriptive captions explain what the actors are reacting to and are important inclusions that might otherwise be lost to those who have trouble hearing".

The latest closed captioned movies and videos at the library include drama, history, biography, juvenile films, and much more. You can sort by those categories, as well as by date, owning library, and language. 

You can also look up closed captioned materials in the catalogue by using the subject heading Video Recordings for the Hearing Impaired.

Check them out!

*See the comment from Joe Clark, below. As he points out, closed captioning has been built into TVs for almost twenty years now, so it's not just "newer" TVs that have this technology!

Website Accessibility

Toronto Public Library is committed to making our website accessible to users.  Recently we have launched a area on our site dedicated helping customer get the most out of their online experience.  You can find this area from the bottom of the home page under the Accessibility section or click here http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/accessibility/web-accessibility/ .  Some features are semantic page structures for ease of navigation, machine readable text, and keyboard usable design.

There are also browser accessibility guides available for assistance on changing font size, text to speech and magnifying the screen.   We hope that these features will help customers to access our online content.

 

Having trouble seeing the computer?

Do you strain to see what’s on your computer screen? Have trouble reading text, recognizing pictures and graphics, or finding what you are looking for?

Screen magnification software called  Zoomtext Magnifier enlarges and enhances everything on the computer screen, making your computer easier to see and use.

You can select from a range of magnification levels from 1X to 36X, and a high visibility mouse pointer to make it easier to see on the screen.   This software with a large print keyboard is available on 1 computer in all branches. Ask staff at your local branch to direct you to this computer.

Download Screen Magnification tip sheet 2011

Choosing an e-Reader, Part Two: Review of the Chapters-Indigo Kobo

(Kobo Wi-Fi)

The next product featured in our series of e-reader reviews is the Kobo, available from Chapters-Indigo.

Choosing an eReader - Review of the Amazon Kindle

Amazon has recently made some improvements to the Kindle, including a new joystick that allows users to move the cursor around the text to select words and look up definitions at their leisure (the kindle will also say a word out loud for you, if you aren’t sure how to pronounce it). This also makes navigating newspapers much easier, as you can flip through headlines and jump to the desired article. Pushing down on the joystick also lists each newspaper section. As with the other e-readers, the text can be magnified to the desired size for easier reading.

Additionally, Kindle 2.0 also features unique text-to-speech capabilities that aren’t found on any other e-reader. This allows for items on the screen to be read out loud, a helpful tool for anyone with a visual or learning disability, or even ESL users. Speech can be played over the Kindle’s built-in speakers, or using stereo headphones. While this is a step in the right direction, users with visual disabilities should note that it is difficult to navigate the menus to activate this function without sighted help, and there are few controls to navigate through the text with this option enabled, aside from Play/Pause (so you cannot rewind through the text without difficulty). Additionally, the physical aspects of the device are small, somewhat cramped and can be hard to navigate for users with limited motion or significant visual disabilities. AccessWorld has an excellent review of the product from an accessibility standpoint here, which points out that, while potentially useful to users with low vision, the Kindle is not ideal for blind users. 

The downside of the Kindle is that, while it does support the formats used by downloadable content from Toronto Public Library, it is not compatible with OverDrive, our download managing software, or Adobe Digital Editions, which is the software we use to manage digital rights on copyrighted materials (this is how your computer knows to delete a file after your one- or three-week loan period has elapsed). However, if you are comfortable purchasing your eBooks directly from Amazon, they can be uploaded very easily from your computer via USB, or downloaded directly from Amazon using the built-in wireless function. The kindle also features (limited) HTML browsing, and Facebook/Twitter access for passage-sharing.

 

Verdict: While the Kindle is definitely a cool device and unique in its use of text-to-speech functions, it is incompatible with e-content downloaded from TPL and still has a long way to go in terms of its accessibility functions.

 

Read our review of the Chapters-Indigo Kobo

Choosing an eReader – A guide for library users with disabilities

 

A reality of the changing literary market is that e-readers have become a major game-changer in terms of how we read books. In the last several years we’ve seen a number of different products hit the market, starting with Amazon’s Kindle and branching out to include devices such as the Borders/Chapters-Indigo Kobo, Apple iPad and Sony eReader, among others. There’s a substantial amount of controversy surrounding these devices from the publishing side, a lot of it having to do (not surprisingly) with money.

 

You’re probably wondering what this means for you – which devices are ideal for someone with a disability? Toronto Public Library offers extensive e-content available to download from the TPL site using OverDrive, including eBooks and audiobooks available in various formats. However, which of these popular eReaders the compatible with library downloads and various e-formats such as PDF or ePUB?

 

Staring with Amazon’s Kindle and continuing each week, we’ll give you a quick run-down of each device so that you get an idea of which product might be right for you, if you’ve considered purchasing an e-reader. With library users and people with disabilities in mind, each review will evaluate for compatibility with downloadable content from TPL, as well as the accessibility features (or possibly, lack thereof!) of each product.

 

Jump to review of the Amazon Kindle

Jump to review of the Chapters-Indigo Kobo