The Warrior Librarian has made an index of her biography, with amusing results.
Ken Wilson will send you text-to-speech versions of Gutenberg titles
Ken Wilson is mostly blind but reads via text-to-speech software. He saves copies of the copyright-free books he reads in MP3 format. He offers to make text-to-speech recordings of Gutenberg titles on CD available to anyone who is blind or partially sighted as an MP3 or a wav file, for low or no cost [with donations gratefully accepted].
the imact of knowing Braille on reading habits & employment
The difference between patrons who have been blind since birth and ones who have lost their site in their later years in terms of reading habits is striking. It can be tough for older readers to adapt to books on tape or CD and especailly to get used to the erratic delivery and paucity of choices of audio book delivery. This article on Braille literacy discusses how knowledge in and fluency of Braille can affect reading habits, employability and self-sufficiency.
VIBUG – computer user group for the blind and visually impaired
For those who are already up to speed on assistive technology, user groups are starting to form. The Visually Impaired and Blind User Group of Boston is one of many. And they have a teeny lending library. [thanks don]
some rss feedback – holy crap people read these titles!!
So I’ve been messing with my RSS aggregator for the better part of a day now and I have this to say: I enjoy reading sites in the aggregator whose only [or main] function is to provide content. In fact, in some instances reading blogs this way allows me to avoid some very busy pages and just read all their content as black on white text with nice blue links. This is great for news sites, pretty good for most blogs, and downright disturbing for more arty sites where the design is really part of the content, or accentuates the content in some important way. I know the big push in good web design is to separate content from presentation from structure specifically to enable this sort of approach [and allow people to access content via phones, browsers, PDAs etc] which think is great. However I also see a lot of sites really designing specifically for syndication which means bland sites, no “flavor text” in the sidebars, very few images, and no extra content that isn’t their blog or longer blog entries. No real problem, just that watching the shift happen over the past few years has been interesting, and there has been a shift. In my role as web content provider, I’m happy to know how this all works and pleased to be able to both read news this way and provide content this way. As my role as a public librarian in rural Vermont where most of our library patrons are still learning to double-click, I’ll be on the lookout for RSS’s utility.