Hi, Pat. Welcome to Bookshare and to this list. (smile) I don't have any ideas at the moment about finding programs like Kurzweil at a lower price. I do have a suggestion to offer though. If you're comfortable with your screenreader and are on a budget, you may fine scanning with FineReader to be a good alternative to using Kurzweil or Openbook. Finereader costs less than half of what Kurzweil and Openbook do, and it does work with screenreaders. In fact, FineReader is the primary scanning engine used in the programs for blind scanners. If you're comfortable with your screenreader, you can use FineReader to scan books and then save them as rtf files to read with Microsoft Word. Please don't quote me on this, but I think the company that makes FineReader offers a 15-day demo that would let you see if it's software you could work with. I don't own it myself. I think we have 4 or 5 people who use it daily though. Maybe they will have some ideas to offer.
Monica Willyard Pat Pound wrote:
Hello,My name is Pat Pound and I am a new Bookshare member. I had a scanner about ten years ago, but got frustrated iwth it and sold it. I never had software devoted to blindness re scanning. I may want to get back into scanning --the current messages have peaked my interest. Any advice about finding one of the blindness scanning programs at a lesser price? I had no idea scanners have come down so much and can be carried along with a laptop. Cool. Pat
