A new partnership between NYPL and Bookshare serves patrons with print
disabilities
anywhere in New York State. Any library throughout the
state can help their patrons get free access to over 370,000 accessible
ebooks/eAudiobooks from home.
A print disability can be a visual impairment (including legal blindness
or age-related vision loss), a physical impairment that affects the
ability to hold a book or turn pages (such as Parkinson's, CP,
arthritis, paralysis, etc), or a reading disability such as dyslexia
that is physically based.
Of course patrons with print disabilities can still use the wonderful
National Library Service
(professionally-narrated audio books, magazines, and players delivered
to the patron's door free through the mail, web download, or mobile app).
They can now also take
advantage of Bookshare: an online database of accessible e-books that
will read themselves aloud with the computer or mobile device's voice,
while highlighting enlargeable text onscreen. There is no wait or hold
queue and patrons can request titles to be added.
Bookshare usually charges a fee for non-students, but the new partnership
makes it free to all NYPL library card holders.
If you live, work, or pay taxes in the State, you can
get an NYPL library card
without having to come into a branch.
Once you have an activated card,
call
917-ask-nypl to get the
free Bookshare promo code.
Possibly helpful are these very short videos about understanding print
disabilities and Bookshare:
More information about what is offered and how to sign up is available at
nypl.org/printdisabilities.
Questions on the details of using Bookshare can go to their help center
at
www.bookshare.org/cms/help-center.
