Understood, Valerie. Thanks!
From: Valerie Maples <vlmaples1@xxxxxxx>
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, November 7, 2015 9:15 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Some Newbie Questions
Bill;
You have to remember that Bookshare is for anyone with a print disability, not
just individuals who are blind. There are many sighted members who have
physical access issues as well as people with dyslexia. Retaining the
formatting of italics, bold, etc. are very important to give cues for things
such as title or emphasis. There are some readers that also attribute
inflection to deliver additional information. Same with foreign language, it
alerts them that they may not know the meaning of the word because it is not of
the primary language the book is in.
Thank you for taking up the mantle of scanning! My husband and I have worked on
over 2000 books in memory of our daughters who loved Bookshare as well as
enjoying books we would want to read ourselves but cannot because of our
physical disabilities. My hands are good enough to scan, but not to hold the
book for reading. Doug is a ventilator dependent quadriplegic who runs his
computer by voice and is a very talented proofreader who can even take a raw
scan from me to clean up for me or someone else to proofread. Our abilities
complement each other’s very well.
It is our hope that you find volunteering as rewarding as we do! :-)
Valerie Maples
I talk, computer types, we both make mistakes. ;-)
On Nov 7, 2015, at 10:45 PM, William Korn (Redacted sender "willythekorn" for
DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was wondering about that. Thanks for the information.
Since I'm here, one more question. The book I'm scanning is a novel. No
illustrations, footnotes, sidebars, bullet points, boldface, etc.. But it does
have italics - for names of ships and for occasional phrases in a foreign
language. Do I need to keep that formatting? Do italics make any difference
in how it would be read out by whatever device was doing the reading?
Bill Korn
