WHAT'S NEW AND WHERE TO GET IT

Publications

The National Braille Press released QUICK AND COZY AFGHANS, which includes 52 easy patterns. Patterns range from "Classic Elegance" to "Country Casual" and "Soft and Sweet.” QUICK & COZY AFGHANS is available by download and in braille and Portabook formats for $14.95. Also now available is INTERNET EXPLORER 8 WITH JAWS, WINDOW-EYES AND SYSTEM ACCESS, which lists keyboard commands and includes accessibility suggestions and tips. This book is available by download and in braille, Portabook and ASCII text formats for $5. For more information or to order, contact National Braille Press at 888-965-8965 or www.nbp.org.

All editions of Playback Magazine and Playback Underground are now available as MP3 files. Hear the technology age unfold before your very ears. More than 385 hours of material is included in this collection. Ed Potter's historic collection is available for download now from www.bluegrasspals.com/playback. The collection is also available for purchase on CDs containing MP3 files. The Playback Magazine on a set of 16 CDs costs $25. The 26-CD set of both Playback and Playback Underground costs $39. Note that your CD player must be able to play MP3 files. For more information, call 773-572-7899.

The National Council on Disability released its report, “Effective Emergency Management: Making Improvements for Communities and People with Disabilities,” which calls on federal, state and local authorities to make sweeping changes in emergency management practices for people with disabilities. The report offers information and advice to assist all levels of government in their work to establish evidence-based policies, programs and practices across the lifecycle of disasters. Additional information about people with disabilities and emergency management can be found at NCD’s Lessons Learned Web site and in the 2005 report, "Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning." For more information, visit www.ncd.gov or call 202-272-2004 (Voice) or 202-272-2074 (TTY).

The National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange published a new informational tip sheet to assist international blind and low vision visitors in preparing to come to the United States. This free tip sheet provides help for locating resources such as orientation and mobility services, dog guide training, public transportation and live readers. Tips for independent living including cooking, laundry and managing money are also included as well as information about learning braille, accessing audio and e-books and using assistive technology. To read the tip sheet, visit www.miusa.org or call 541-343-1284 for more information.

Products and Services

Patrons of the National Library Service who would like to read the new digital books but who don’t yet have a player may want to consider HumanWare’s new Victor Reader Stream Library Edition, which is a pocket-size player capable of playing both the download digital books and the new book cartridges. The new Victor Reader Stream Library Edition comes with a book cartridge holder that attaches to the back of the Stream for playing the cartridge directly on the player. It is designed to detect and start playing the book cartridge when it is inserted and will resume playing the book from where it was stopped. The Stream also has a copy feature to copy the book cartridge to the memory card of the Stream to enable users to store multiple books on the Stream. The NLS digital books are encrypted and patrons must apply to the NLS BARD Web site to get an authorization file that when loaded to the Stream provides the necessary digital decryption key to play both the download books and book cartridges. Visit the BARD Web site at https://nlsbard.loc.gov for information.

The Stream can play books from many other Internet sources such as RFB&D.org, Bookshare.org, Audible.com, and ReadHowYouWant.com. It also plays music and has built-in speech to play text files and NLS electronic Web-Braille books. The Stream also features a voice recorder for notes. To learn more about the standard Stream, $349, and Stream Library Edition, $399, contact HumanWare at 800-722-3393 or www.Humanware.com/streamLE.

Independent Living Aids has partnered with RNIB to introduce the newest voice-labeling system on the market, the PenFriend, which allows users to easily record and re-record information onto self-adhesive labels. This small pen-shaped recorder operates with four buttons. Users can instantly play back the recordings--no computer required. Use the PenFriend to label food items, including frozen foods, and record cooking instructions, catalog film and music collections and organize household paperwork. The PenFriend comes with 1 GB of internal memory and has more than 70 hours of recording time. There is no limit to the length of recording time on a label. The PenFriend includes 127 labels, built-in speaker, USB cable, neck lanyard and two AAA batteries. Extra labels are available in packs of 380 for $29.95. The RNIB PenFriend Voice Labeling System costs $149.95. For information, contact Independent Living Aids at 800-537-2118 or http://www.independentliving.com.

Ai Squared released ZoomText Express, an affordable solution to computer eyestrain. ZoomText Express provides up to 2x magnification, which makes everything on-screen larger and easier to read. A variety of screen tints reduce glare and improve contrast. ZoomText Express works on computers running Windows Vista or Windows XP. A domestic copy of ZoomText Express is $49.99 for an electronic download or $59.99 for a boxed product. An international copy is $69.99 for electronic download. For more information, contact Ai Squared at 800-859-0270 or www.aisquared.com.

StreetTalk VIP is a new navigation tool that when paired with a GPS receiver and PAC Mate Omni is a route-savvy travel companion for visually impaired people as well as a real-time exploration guide that provides information through braille or speech. Millions of Points of Interest are included. Save turn-by-turn directions. Switch to Virtual Mode and explore the map as though you were a pedestrian, with cross streets, distances, direction and Points of Interest announced. The complete StreetTalk North American Bundle which includes the StreetTalk VIP Program and Documentation CD, US and Canada maps on disk, a Bluetooth GPS receiver and Socket Bluetooth CompactFlash card costs $1,799. For more information, contact Freedom Scientific at 800-444-4443 or www.freedomscientific.com.

GW Micro released the Portable SenseView Pocket, one of the smallest portable CCTVs available. While the screen of the Portable SenseView Pocket is a 3.4 inch flat screen, it does not use an LCD. Instead, it uses the new Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology. The screen is brighter with true black and unsurpassed color. It also has an unlimited viewing angle, so you can easily see what is on the screen from any direction. The camera is located in the center, and it incorporates near-distance technology, which means you can hold the unit over top of what you are looking at, instead of having to put it directly on the surface. This makes using the SenseView Pocket as easy as using a magnifying glass. You can magnify images from 1.5x up to 10.5x with just the press of a button. Choose from several different color modes, including full color, black and white, enhanced black and white, white on black, and enhanced white on black. The brightness of the screen and the brightness of the LED lights located on the bottom of the unit can be adjusted. The Portable SenseView Pocket costs $595. For information, contact GW Micro at 260-489-3671 or www.gwmicro.com.

An add-in wizard for Microsoft Word that allows users to easily create PDFs that are accessible to people with disabilities has been announced by the document-compliance-management company NetCentric Technologies Inc. The PDF Accessibility Wizard (PAW) for MS Word is an add-in that builds on NetCentric’s widely used PDF accessibility tool CommonLook, and will be available online at www.net-centric.com/products/PAW.aspx. Users don’t need Adobe Acrobat to use PAW. Rather, the add-in acts much like Acrobat PDF Maker, easily saving a document in PDF format from within Word itself. Supported on the Windows Vista or XP platforms, PAW is compatible with MS Word 2007, with versions for Excel and PowerPoint soon to follow. Through PAW, content authors provide accessibility information at the time of a document’s creation, with accessibility thereby becoming part of the standard authoring process. This lowers the cost of compliance with accessibility standards. Comprehensive verification applies all PDF-relevant Section 508 checkpoints and identifies instances of non-compliance, allowing for easy remediation. The software is easy to use as the wizard automates most tasks and provides easy-to-understand detailed instructions. No prior knowledge of accessibility is required. Quickly mapping MS Word styles to appropriate PDF tags and fixing complex tables, an average five-page document takes less than five minutes to make accessible. For information, contact NetCentric Technologies Inc. at 877-226-0877 or http://www.net-centric.com.