I have never read a book from bookshare.org because I think that it costs money, while very many good books can be found for free. But, before bookshare started to give O'Reilly books, O'Reilly had a free service for the blind, and I received books from them.
They created an FTP account where I could download the books I wanted, and before creating me that FPT account, I needed to send them a scanned paper that proves that I am a blind.
They accepted my paper, even if I live in Romania, Europe, not USA.They told me that it is not a problem that I live in Romania, because they also had some romanian employees, and I think they use to accept those papers no matter the country.
Octavian----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Hofstader" <chris.hofstader@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 2:36 PM Subject: Scanner/Stuff...
Hi Guys, My parents are in town so I'm fairly distracted from vocational and otherprogramming related tasks. I did, however, manage to find a scanner with adocument feeder (they used to call these sheet feeders, were consumersstupid enough to think they had something to do with bedding or is using themore sophisticated term a way to hit me up for an additional $25 or so by making me think it's a device far more interesting than something that simply scans sheets of paper - which, in fact, is what I want it to do). I bought a new Canon from the low end of their "professional" line whichwasn't terribly expensive and only slightly slower than the one that died onus last week. It is expected to arrive by UPS mule by Thursday so Sue can start the Drupal scanning project on Friday while I'm having a tattoo put onto my left forearm. Assuming we don't get bogged down in a lot of paper jams and other scanning hell, we should have the book done by sometime on Saturday. This brings me to a minor conundrum - currently Bookshare.org is my mostprofitable client (the amount I earn from my different projects varies on amonthly basis depending upon how much attention I can devote to a gig and the project's level of urgency). I want, therefore, to promote BSOsubscriptions to help defray the cost of the work they pay me to perform andto help keep the non-profit running smoothly as possible. At the same time, I don't want to exclude our friends outside the US fromhaving access to this and other books on programming and technology that weprocess. Also, any web site that posts the book without the protections afforded by BSO, NLS and the others runs into a possible copyright problem with the publisher as, although we claim it is intended for blind people only, we have no way of protecting the content to ensure that proof of a print disability has been proffered before we share the book. I'm open to all sorts of ideas, please make suggestions. Yesterday, I spent an additional $250 on a birthday gift for my twin niece and nephew. I got them the Lego robotics starter kit which includes a ton of really neat features (you can read about it at lego.com), there are atleast a half dozen books on Amazon describing projects one can make with theset, loads of add on parts, the ability to write code on a PC and download it to your bot and so many other very cool features that I could write for hours. The kids were first introduced to these Legos as part of their charterschool program that brought them to MIT for two hours per week, one hour onrobotics using the kit I got for them and the other on crypt-analysis and code breaking. Where were such programs when I was eleven years old? On a more topic based question, though, if I recall from my own childhood,Lego bricks and other pieces were highly tactile - does anyone know of blindkids using this kit to make their own robots? Does anyone know of anytrials with children with vision impairment and such a kit? I'm curious tolearn if it could be fit into a middle school course for budding blind hackers. Enjoy, cdh __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
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