Lab Notebook – August 20, 2012

[I don’t agree with this blind reader about talking books (they are reading, too) but I’m down with scan-your-own!]
Peter White: “It’s not perfect yet. Scanning books page by page is tedious; variations of type and print size can often produce equally variable results, which require skilful editing to make legible; and every time someone upgrades software or changes an operating system, you find yourself back at square one. With books being produced electronically as a matter of course, publishers, authors and agents could be much more helpful. Surely a way of making digital versions of books available to blind people prepared to pay for them, or borrow them under clearly defined conditions, could be devised without bringing down the publishing industry in an explosion of piracy? While we wait for the publishers and the blind organisations to get their fingers out, we blind readers take matters into our own hands, passing our scanned books quietly among ourselves like kids with drugs on street corners. But hey! For a few of us lucky enough to have the equipment, the money and the help, things are so much better today. Now it’s me who is able to take as many books on holiday as I like, all packed on those little cards, while my wife has to limit herself to three or four paperbacks. The days of War and Peace in 21 braille volumes, slipping the postman’s disc as he staggers up the path, are nearly over.”