- iPhone/iPod Touch: The Ultimate E-book Reader
- Bookshare Gets A Makeover
- Amazon Kindle 2 Includes Text to Speech Capability
- Putting Bookshare.org Books On The iPad
Reading seems like a simple activity. One that is so simple that it’s probably taken for granted by most people. But if you’re somebody with severe physical limitations reading can become a chore. Whether it’s holding a book, turning the pages, or both the simple act of reading can be a major problem.
Over the years alternatives have emerged that attempted to solve this problem. Book holders combined with hand splints or mouth sticks was a combination I used frequently in college but it was quite tiring keeping the book open and holding the pages in place. There were also electronic page turning devices where you could place a book in the device and then use a switch to turn the page. These devices had trouble turning single pages sometimes but overall they work reasonably well. But of course to read you have to sit wherever the device is set up.
As e-books have become more and more popular e-book reading software has been made available for computers (both PCs and Macs). Since there are several ways for people with physical limitations to easily access their computers these days using software like this would seem like a great solution. It really is – if you don’t mind reading on your computer. My problem is I do enough on my computer already so I don’t want to be tethered to my computer for reading as well. Also growing in popularity are audio books. Audio books can be played on a variety of mobile devices such as cell phones and MP3 players. So you could read virtually anywhere and not have to worry about turning pages and so on. But you might not be able to find the book you want in audio book form. More importantly, you might be one of those people, like myself, who would much rather read a book as opposed to listen to it being read by somebody else.
Finally, there are electronic e-book readers. You may have heard of the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader. These are probably the two most well-known electronic e-book readers. You can put hundreds of books on each device and carry them with you wherever you go. Each of these devices have their strengths and weaknesses but apparently both do a pretty good job at what they were designed to do – be a mobile reading device. I personally haven’t had a chance to use either of these devices so I can’t comment on their accessibility. But from what I’ve read and seen online about them I do think it’s possible that they may work for some people with physical limitations. But in the last few months I’ve unexpectedly stumbled onto another device that I think is the best solution of them all. Would you believe it’s the iPod touch? Well start to believe because it’s true.
When I say iPod touch this also includes the iPhone because they both can run the same e-book reading applications. But for the purposes of this article I’ll just refer to the iPod touch.
Using Apple’s “App Store”, which is part of the iTunes Store, you can download applications for your iPod touch that were created by third parties. Some are free while others have a small fee associated with them. Right after the App Store opened in early July I immediately noticed a few e-book reading applications were immediately available and some of them were free! I did a little reading up on these applications and watched some demonstration videos and I was immediately impressed.
The e-book reader app that I’ve been primarily using is called “Stanza” so I will focus on that in this article but I will mention some of the other ones that are available throughout the article. Stanza works in conjunction with a (currently) free desktop version that is available for both PCs and Macs. The desktop version has every feature that the iPod Touch version has plus a few more. So if you’re inclined to read on your computer I highly recommend the desktop version of Stanza. Stanza contains built-in reading support for Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, PalmDoc, Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, HTML, and PDF formats, as long as no DRM is present. The Stanza website FAQ has a list of free e-book sites that contain literally thousands of e-books in one or more of those formats. There’s also Bookshare.org which I’ll discuss later in this article.
To get e-books from your computer to your iPod touch you must open them in the Stanza desktop application. Using your WiFi connection Stanza for the iPod touch will be able to “see” whatever books you have open in the Stanza desktop application. You can then simply download them to your iPod touch. If you don’t use a WiFi connection you’ll still be able to transfer e-books as long as your computer has a wireless networking card installed (all relatively recent Macs do) – the Stanza FAQ has information about this too. Once you get the hang of this it’s pretty easy to do and you’ll have your iPod touch filled with books in no time!
You may run into formatting issues with some e-books. Some formats translate better than others. Within the Stanza desktop application you can convert files to many different formats. You’ll probably need to play around with this a bit to find out what format looks best to you on your iPod touch. The Stanza website also has some suggestions on how to improve the formatting. Personally as long as the text is legible I’m happy. So I really don’t care if the line breaks are perfect and whatnot.
If formatting is really a big deal to you and you can’t get satisfying results from Stanza I suggest the eReader app. The catch with that app is you can only read e-books in the eReader PDB format. This includes eReader.com, its partner Fictionwise.com, and any site that has PDB formatted e-books. This may sound limiting but eReader.com and Fictionwise.com have pretty large selections of commercial e-books and all are priced below what you would pay for a hardcover or soft cover version of the book. Then there’s the free PDB sites out there as well. So while there is a larger selection of e-books that Stanza can read, most people will probably be happy with the number of titles the eReader app supports. I’ve actually had an account with the eReader.com for a few years and used their Mac desktop client to occasionally read e-books on my Mac so I was already quite familiar with them. I should also mention that you can download e-books from the Internet directly to your iPod touch from within the eReader app itself which is pretty handy. Check out the eReader for iPhone and iPod touch FAQ for more information on how to do this or any other questions you may have about the eReader app.
With the advantages that eReader has (perfectly formatted books and direct download) you might wonder why I even bother with Stanza? That’s where Bookshare.org comes in. Bookshare.org is a not-for-profit organization that provides e-books for persons with print disabilities. They believe that people with print disabilities deserve the same ease of access to books and periodicals that people without disabilities enjoy. The Bookshare.org library provides print disabled people of the United States with legal access to over 40,600 books and 150 periodicals that are converted to Braille, large print or digital formats for text-to-speech audio. Some books are also available to people outside the USA – see the international information page for full details.
The selection of books is huge and you can find just about any book you can think of, including usually all of the New York Times current best-seller list. And if they don’t have a book you can request it and they will do what they can to get it for you. There is a sign-up fee of US$25 and a yearly subscription fee of US$50. You only have to pay the sign-up fee once. These charges are used to cover the costs of running the organization. You must provide proof of your disability in the form of a doctor’s signature in order to qualify. Once you are a member there is no limit to how many books you can download. Whenever I download a book I choose the DAISY Digital Talking Book Format. The DAISY Digital Talking Book Format works well with text-to-speech technology (like Apple’s excellent VoiceOver screen reading technology) but can easily be converted to the HTML format using Bookshare’s included software. Then Stanza takes over and does the rest as I explained above. I’ve already downloaded more books than I could probably read in a lifetime and it only cost me US$75!
Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way we come to the most important issue — accessibility. With Stanza (or eReader) it’s extremely simple to read a book. All you have to do is simply tap on the right or left side of the screen to turn the page forward or backward respectively. You can customize the font, font size, background color, and text color. I prefer white text on a black background because it’s easy to see. And you can make the font size huge if you wish if you have trouble seeing. Each application offers several options to customize your reading experience. For options to help with touching the screen, see iPod Touch Ideas For Stylus And Mouth Stick Users.
Finally, there’s even a method for reading e-books on an iPod Touch that doesn’t require any touching at all. There is another app available called “Bookshelf” that has a vertical scrolling feature. Basically you just tap a button and the text starts scrolling at a speed of your choice. So if you can’t use a stylus or a mouth stick you need only have somebody tap the start button and then you can read to your heart’s desire! The Stanza desktop application has a horizontal and vertical scrolling feature but it is not currently present in the Stanza iPod touch app. Apparently there’s a chance this feature could be added in a future update. I would probably use this feature on occasion if it were available to me but it’s not vital for me so I’m content to wait for the developers of Stanza to add this feature rather than pay US$10 for Bookshelf (although I will if I have to).
Before investing in an iPod Touch I suggest trying one out first if possible to see if it’s accessible enough for your needs. If you don’t know somebody that has one that you could play with there’s always an Apple Store or perhaps any place that sells them.
So I hope I’ve demonstrated how effective the iPod Touch can be as a accessible e-book reader. Even if you’re not physically disabled it’s a great option for reading e-books. But if you are you’re probably not going to find too many options that are better.
- Paul Natsch
http://www.gutenberg.org
http://www.free-ebooks.net/
http://lifehacker.com/software/ebook/google-offers-free-book-downloads
These are some places to find free ebooks The last one is a guide and looks good. I am a Kindle person but I will never have to pay for a classic again.
Amazon has a good nymber of free ebooks in their Kindle section
http://lifehacker.com/software/ebook/google-offers-free-book-downloads
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/
http://www.friedbeef.com/2007/04/09/best-places-to-get-free-books-the-ultimate-guide/
diane bechtler’s most recent blog post: DNS
@Diane: Thanks for the e-book resources! Fantastic for reading all the classics.
I don’t have an iPod Touch or iPhone (sob!) but I use eReader on my desktop and love it.
People should be aware that the Stanza desktop app does not fully support 64 bit Macs (e.g. basically everything Apple has sold for a few years) as I’ve found out and as noted in their faq: http://www.lexcycle.com/node/58. It makes it very impractical to get documents you’ve already got into Stanza on the iPhone. No Thanks.
@Tim: Thanks for the information about that. There seems to be conflicting information in the comments there though – some people have it working on recent Macs. Do you know anything about what exactly are the symptoms of it not working?
@Ricky: I’m on the last Mac Book Pro before the unibody model. When I run Stanza on that Mac, I get an error that it does not run on 64 bit Macs. I’ve seen this on two versions. I believe one was the latest beta and the other was the latest release.
I’ve seen the reports that some people successfully run it, but Lexcycle’s FAQ (linked in my other comment) confirms the problem.
Since my post, I went looking for alternatives and eReader and Bookshelf seem to be the only two significant ones. Based on reviews, I’m trying eReader. I’m not fond of trusting someone else’s website for my syncing but it only took a few minutes to do it via my own ala their directions.
As I was doing my research, I found a lot of reports that Stanza’s desktop software strips out formatting during conversion. That’s a signficant issue, imho.
FWIW, it’s not mentioned on the eReader site, but several sites are reporting that they are are working on ePub support.
Aha. According to the FAQ although my computer is a Mac Pro it’s not actually a 64-bit machine, so that explains why it’s working for me. Hopefully they’ll make it work for newer computers also ASAP.
I use eReader for DRM-protected books already, so hopefully that one would work OK also.
This is a great post, especially since I’m being given a couple of iPod Touches to “play” with! I’m curious about something though, do Stanza or ereader “read” the books to you? that would be a great way to make books more portable for students with disabilities. If not, is there an iPod app out there with this capability?
As far as I know there isn’t any iPhone/iPod Touch app out there that does precisely want you want. This includes Stanza and E-reader. I would imagine somebody will fill this void eventually though.
In the meantime the following link might provide a solution for you:
http://www.text2go.com/
Also, Amazon released their next generation Kindle today and it has built-in text-to-speech capability. Read about it here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/138709/2009/02/kindle2.html?lsrc=rss_main
Hope this helps.
I’ll check it out! Thanks!
There’s a free PDB converter made available by the process text group. It doesn’t work with all files, but it’s worked on the ones I’ve tried. I prefer using the much more common HTML.
i’m an newbie on this. so i need a help from ol’ of U guys. i want to buy an ipod touch but i’m still not sure that the itouch could read ebooks file such as pdf’s, pdb’s etc. i’ve surf the stanza webpage and they’re pretty convincing. but still i need to be convinced that stanza or ereader could do their magic. my question is? before i install stanza on itouch, do i have to “jailbreak” it? do i have to download ‘em directly from itouch app store or could it be from my pc (vista)? please, i need help guys, since it is hard to find a kindle or such in my country and PDA is too expensive to me. thanx
Between the Stanza, eReader, and Bookshelf Lite apps you can read or convert pretty much any format. All are free. There’s also a free Stanza desktop application for Mac and PC that can convert files to several different formats then wirelessly send them to your iPod Touch (over Wi-Fi). No Jailbreaking necessary.
The iPod Touch and iPhone are very capable ebook readers and mount easily on wheelchair armrests. And you can even buy and/or download ebooks from within some of the apps I mentioned. I hope this helps.
I have Stanza on my Ipod Touch and I have been pretty happy with it except for one problem. When I reach the end of the book it seems to lock up and I can’t get out of that book. I also can’t get to my book list from the icon; when I open it it just goes direct to the book.
I’ve downloaded a couple of PDF books to my laptop. Can I sync them to the Ipod Touch and read them with Stanza?
Thanks for the fine article!
Bob
Never mind — I found the Stanza FAQ and the answer was there.
Thanks for a great site!
FWIW, if you want to read PDFs as PDFs, check out PDF Annotater. I use it to read the manual for my DLSR and other PDFs on my iPhone and so far I’ve been very happy with it. I haven’t played with the annotation features on the iPhone version but the windows version is unbelievably good as an annotation tool.
How do you zoom in and out with PDF Annotater? Double tapping or pinching? I have Air Sharing which is nice but without the use of my fingers I can’t zoom in on PDFs because they only use the pinch to zoom method. What I wouldn’t give for a PDF viewer app with simple “+” and “-” buttons for zooming. I can see why such buttons wouldn’t make sense for most people but they’d make a huge difference for people in my situation.
i have another question Paul, what is the different between 1st gen iTouch and the 2nd one? does it have any difference in the physical appearance? or it just a matter of feature and firmware version? i dont have any friends who ever use itouch before. the local apple stores in my place also dont have any display that can be shown. (or they just dont want to?)
This article explains the differences between the iPod Touch 1G and 2G pretty well:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/10/hands-on-1g-ipo.html
Hope this helps.
For the blind or visually impaired, there is something called the “Victor Reader” which is about the size of an ipod or a bit bigger but much thicker. The buttons are designed for the blind and it plays mp3s, DAISY books and will read text documents to you with variable speed and pitch. Tt will also read the NLS books.
Here is the link:
www.humanware.com/en-usa/products/blindness/dtb_players/compact_models/_details/id_81/victorreader_stream.html
you’ll need an SD storage card for it as well. You can pick these up at Wal Mart, Best Buy, Target, etc.
Humanware has products for other disabilities as well and all of them useful and some quite portable. You should check them out while you are looking at the Victor Reader.
I actually got to use a Victor Reader at the ACB convention and it DOES do all that it claims and is very portable/pocket-sized. But, as always, it is pricey (more than $300) because of such the small targeted market (the visually impaired).
If I have replicated any information already stated or spoke in error, I apologize and please correct me.
Hope this helps some of your readers.
Rae
@Rae: Thanks for the information. The Victor Reader is indeed useful for those who need audio-only information and have $300 to spend on something that just reads books. For people who have a computer already, though, I’d think a text-to-speech program like GhostReader or Narrator and a regular iPod Nano would do 90% of the same job for a much lower cost and higher “cool” factor. The cool factor matters more than it should, but for teens and kids especially, many hate being seen with special disability equipment but would be happy using an iPod. There are programs which can convert DAISY books to a regular iTunes compatible format too. The only thing I can think of that this setup doesn’t offer is the level of navigation possible using DAISY books. But DAISY books can also be played directly on the computer using Olearia if the fine navigation is needed.
Wow! Thanks so much for this post! I have a 2nd gen iPod Touch, and just yesterday night I downloaded the FREE apps from iTunes store: Amazon Kindle, eReader, Wattpad, Stanza and BookShelfLT. I’ll try to download some free ebooks and see which app I prefer. I don’t mind buying ebook when I want to read a newly published book, so I wonder which website offers better price? ^_^ I see Kindle prices are OK, but is there a better one out there? ^_^
I am looking for an e-book for my high school daughter. Does anyone know when high school text books will be available for the kindle or other e-readers. I also would like one that has audio to read to her. Is the kindle the only one that has this feature?
@Michie: If your daughter has a disability that makes reading difficult (blindness, dyslexia, physical disability) then she will be eligible for electronic textbooks for American high schools. You’ll need to talk to the school about this, if it’s the case – under the ADA schools are required to make sure that students have textbooks in appropriate formats. Otherwise, try Paul’s suggestions.
@Michle:There are what Amazon calls “textbooks” for the Kindle on their site but I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for. Here’s the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Textbooks/b/ref=amb_link_85650291_37?ie=UTF8&node=2223210011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=left-1&pf_rd_r=0DM4GEFWNJTW6WGGQSQV&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=499571851&pf_rd_i=1286228011
There’s also this place that has a huge selection of textbooks but unfortunately they can only be read on a Mac or PC, using their free software. However, if you have a laptop you could use that, which might work. You might even be able to use Voiceover (on a Mac) to have it read to you. Here’s the link:
http://www.cafescribe.com/efollett
If all else fails try Googling “high school textbooks and ebook readers” and see if you can find a better solution than I did. Good luck.
Thanks Paul, the cafescribe looks promising. I will post a note after I try it out. Thanks again, Michele
Hi,
Thanks for the all of the information as it is very helpful. I attempted to convert a bookshare file (with a bks2 extension to an epub file) using both calibre and box.net, but I received error messages both times. Are there any suggestions for how to convert bookshare files so I can read them on my IPod touch?
Sorry for multiple posts, I forgot to mention that I attempted to open the file through box.net using the Stanza App on my Ipod Touch. I also tried to open the file using Stanza for Windows desktop with no luck. Thought this might be helpful.
@Courtney: My article above might help.
Also, the Bookshare FAQ also has some good information on this. Points #9 & 10 should be of particular interest:
http://www.bookshare.org/_/gettingStarted/downloadBooks
In case you don’t already have the “Stanza Desktop” application you’ll need that for syncing book files to the Stanza app on your iPod Touch. It’s free and can be found here:
http://www.lexcycle.com/download
Basically after you unpack a Bookshare DAISY format book you’ll get a folder with a bunch of files in it. The one with the “.xml” extension can be opened with your web browser (Safari, Firefox, etc…). In the web browser it opens as a nicely formatted book. Then what I do is “Select All” the text of the book in the web browser window and Copy & Paste it into a new TextEdit window. Then I save the new TextEdit document in Rich Text Format (rtf) with the appropriate title. Now I have a copy of the book that Stanza Desktop can recognize and open. Once the book is open in Stanza Desktop you can easily sync it to the Stanza app on your iPod Touch. Stanza Desktop will also convert it to different formats, although not epub as far as I can tell.
I hope this helps and Happy New Year.
Actually in LexCycle’s (makers of Stanza) forums I found this:
“When you open a book in Stanza Desktop-it converts it to ePub. You can also just save the book you have as ePub, or Export as ePub from within Stanza Desktop.
You can also convert to ePub in Calibre.”
Hi, Contemplating purchase of Kindle 2 or I touch. Major purpose is to read books and listen to music. Any idea of the other costs involved in owning an I touch ?
If you can physically use an iPod Touch I would go with that because it’s cheaper and you can do a lot more with it. The screen may be smaller but that really doesn’t matter as all the e-book reading apps allow you to adjust the font size and the background. So you can make it so it’s very easy to see. Some of the e-book reading apps also have an auto scroll feature so you don’t even have to physically turn the pages. Amazon even offers a free Kindle app so you can purchase and read Kindle books on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Perhaps the only thing that might make a difference to you is that an iPod Touch has a backlit screen whereas the Amazon Kindle uses e-ink technology. So the Kindle is much easier to use in broad daylight and easier on the eyes. The iPod Touch will be much easier to see in darker environments but backlit screens are more likely to cause eye strain. However I’ve read several books on my iPod Touch without any issues.
The iPod Touch is far superior when it comes to music in every way possible. From what I’ve heard listening to music on the Amazon Kindle is functional but its implementation is more of an afterthought.
If you plan on doing a lot of reading the Amazon Kindle is a great device. But the iPod Touch will do a lot more in addition to providing you a reading experience that is not as good as the Amazon Kindle but certainly more than adequate.
You can currently buy second-generation iPod Touch from the Apple refurbished store for $149 (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipod?mco=OTY2ODY2NQ). The Amazon Kindle 2 is $259. From what I’ve heard you can return a Kindle to Amazon within the first 30 days for a full refund. That would give you an opportunity to try one out without worrying about wasting your money.
I hope this helps and good luck!
I know that my friend from work has an app on her iPhone that reads to her. It’s awesome! I haven’t gotten around to ask her what it is so that I can put it on my iPod Touch. Once I get the name, I’ll let everyone know what it is.
@Cristie: Thanks! I have an iPod Touch/iPhone app that’s actually called “Read2Me” which takes electronic text and reads it out. It will import things from the web, from Google Docs documents, or from the iPod Touch/iPhone clipboard. The voice isn’t great but it does an OK job. You have to press the “options” button to get back to the library list, and there’s no way to skip around in the document so it has some serious limitations but if you have a good text it’s good!
Hi Paul,
I was so excited when I stumbled on your post. I have a severely dyslexic son aged 13 who although very intelligent is unable to read. He is constantly listening to audio books however he is about to get an ipod touch and I would love to know if it is possible to get ebooks on it which can be read to him preferably highlighting the words as it goes along.
We live in the UK and there would be no problem getting confirmation of his dyslexia from his school educational psychologist.
I would be so grateful for any information you could give me.
Hi,
I am desperately trying to get content to Stanza on my son’s IPOD touch. However, the Stanza desktop is no longer available. We belong to bookshare.org which are in daisy format, but your article states Stanza will read html, which is easy to do with bookshare. However, Stanza now says to upload to stanza.fictionwise.com for it’s app. BUT it will only upload a PDB file…i have been at this for almost 2 hours and can’t seem to figure out how to get the content to the Ipod. Please help.
Karole
@Karole: Sorry for the slow reply. Stanza now uses the built in iTunes file sharing to put files into its library. Plug in your device and make sure iTunes can “see” the device – it should be listed in the left hand column. Click on the device’s entry in iTunes left column if it’s not already there, then click on the “Apps” tab near the top of the device’s main page. Down the bottom of the tab that appears you should see the Stanza icon – you might have to scroll down to find it. Click on that and you will be able to add files to its list. After that they should synchronise properly.
I’m currently using ibooks on my Ipod touch to read books. Its pretty good to read with and I’m happy with the exception that the search part of it works well to find the book you want by name etc.. and also if you open a book you can search text within a book but it doen’t give the oportunity to search for text over a range of books.
For example I have 10 books and Im looking for text that is in one of the books but I dont know where. Currently this software can’t search for this. Can anybody tell me what Reader can I use that will support this feature as well. Thanks
@Ruben: That’s a great question and I honestly don’t know, I’ll try to find out and report back …