Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Bookshare's Free Daisy Readers

Question:
Do the students who have access to Bookshare need to be visually impaired to get the Daisy Reader free or can any of our qualified Sp. Ed. Students download the Daisy Reader so they can read books at home?

Answer:
Any member of Bookshare can download either of the two readers. One is Read:Outloud and the other is Victor Reader. They can both read DAISY files. Read:Outloud is better suited for kids with learning disabilities and Victor is better suited for kids with vision issues. (To be a member of Bookshare, students must qualify as having a print disability. Read more at http://bookshare.org/about/membershipQualifications).

Opening Files Downloaded From Bookshare

Question:
I downloaded a book from Bookshare. I unzipped the file I downloaded, but I can't open the book.

Answer:
Double check that you actually unzipped the file you downloaded. If you just double-clicked on the zip file, you are viewing the contents, but you have not actually completed the step to uncompress them yet.
  1. Go back to the zip file
  2. Right-click on the zip file and choose "Extract All" from the pop-up menu
  3. NOW you can open the .xml file or the .opf file in your text reader