NLS/BARD: Downloading Done Easy Transcript

advertisement
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Seminars@Hadley
NLS/BARD: Downloading Done Easy
Presented by
Douglas Walker
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
June 6, 2012
Doug Anzlovar
Okay, I would formally like to open today’s seminar.
Today’s seminar topic is NLS/BARD: Downloading
Done Easy. Your presenter for today is Douglas
Walker. Douglas has worked in the field of blindness
and visual impairment for the past twenty years. He is
currently an instructor specializing in the area of
assistive technology for the Hadley School for the
Blind. He also teaches assistive technology course
work as an adjunct professor in the vision programs at
Vanderbilt University and Trevecca Nazarene
University. Douglas was previously employed at the
Tennessee School for the Blind as the outreach
technology consultant and has also served as an
itinerant vision teacher for several counties in West
Tennessee.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 1 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So at this time I’m going to turn the microphone over
to Douglas. He will give you an introduction to today’s
topic. We will have breaks throughout the seminar for
questions. So please hold your questions until we
have those breaks. Thank you. Doug, the microphone
is yours.
Douglas Walker
Alright, so this is Douglas Walker. I am a new
instructor of assistive technology here at Hadley. I’m
thrilled to be a part of the Hadley family. I really feel
like I have found a home here at Hadley and I see a
lot of my students already in the room and I
appreciate you being here. I appreciate everyone
being here for my first seminar.
This is my first seminar to be presenting here. I’ve
done workshops on this same topic before. In the
past, as a matter of fact, these workshops usually last
an entire day, so to squeeze it into ninety minutes is
sort of nerve-wracking. So we’re going to have to
move on through it today to be able to get to all the
content. I feel confident we’re going to get it done and
we’re going to get it done easy so you guys can learn
some tips and tricks.
In saying that, this seminar really is geared more
toward the newer user of the BARD system, so know
that I am going to be going step by step through the
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 2 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
process and it’s going to be a very generic way of
doing it so that it can be approached by pretty much
any screen reader. I’m going to try to stay away from
JAWS-specific commands, even though I will be using
JAWS today. I’ll try to stay away from those JAWS
commands and use primarily just Windows key
strokes to move through the site.
To let you know a little bit about what we’re going to
do, we’re going to access the BARD website, and talk
a little bit about the application process for getting into
BARD. Then we’re going to enter into the system, get
on the BARD main page, we’re going to slowly dig
through that page so that you are aware of all the
types of content that are available on the BARD
website. I want that to be clear. All the different ways
that you can get to a book search there.
After we do that, we’re going to download a couple of
books, maybe even a magazine. We’ll open it up for
questions for a bit, again, just limited to just a couple
of questions probably because we need to move on.
Then we will come back on how to extract a file. After
that, we will transfer it over to the player and then
hopefully, after all is said and done, we’ll have the
content on our cartridge and be able to play it on the
player for you guys. So that’s the plan for today.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 3 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Forgive me if I have to move really fast to get through
all this, but do understand that this will be archived
later on to the Hadley website under ‘Past Seminars’
so you’ll be able to go download it, listen to it, stream
it, download it to a podcast, and go step by step
through this. All this is just a matter of practice, so if
you practice each one of these steps, you become
very proficient at being able to download the content.
So, let me head over to the website. I already have it
up and running, ‘Alt-Tab’ [JAWS audio reads “AltTab… Please log in a Windows Internet Explorer”].
Alright so we are at the top of the login page. What
I’m going to do is I’m going to give you the web
address so you’ll know how to get there:
nlsbard.loc.gov – ‘loc’ stands for ‘Library of Congress’;
‘gov’ stands for ‘government’. Now if you’re going to
the address bar and typing it in, that’s what you’re
going to want to do in most instances, because if you
type a www in there, for some reason it takes you to a
Google search so just type in that nlsbard.loc.gov and
it should take you to this log in page.
Now, I’ve taught in the elementary ed. computer labs
for years in the past so I’m a big stickler for knowing
where you are on the page. You’ll hear me go ‘Ctrlhome’ [JAWS audio reads “Please log in”] a bunch as
we travel through this. My theory is you can’t know
where you are going unless you know where you are.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 4 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So we always get to the top of the page so we know
where we are, so we can get where we want to go.
It’s very similar to mobility. Moving around inside a
computer is very similar to orientation mobility. You
have to know your environment that you are moving
through.
So we’re at the top of the page and I mentioned – I
probably didn’t mention but – last week I moderated a
seminar with Ruth Hemphill. She’s the director of the
Tennessee Library for the Blind. And she talked about
signing up for NLS Services and she did a great job of
that. So if you want to go back and download that,
listen to that, if you’re not yet signed up with NLS,
she’ll give you all the information on how to sign up
with NLS.
So you have to be signed up with NLS service before
you can sign up for the BARD service; signing up with
that means signing up with your local library. So once
you’ve signed up with your local library and you know
you’re signed up because you’ve gotten your
wonderful digital player sent to you and so you know
you’re signed up with your local library, you can then
begin your BARD application process. So that’s
where we’re going to start right now.
To go to the BARD application you can go to this
website, nlsbard.loc.gov, and if you hit your ‘Tab’ key
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 5 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
that is going to take you to the first link on that page
[JAWS audio reads “Tab… BARD application
instruction link”]. And that’s going to take us to a link
that we can access. That’s going to take us through
the BARD application process. We can get through it
all in there. We’re not going to go through that link,
but I’m going to explain to you a little bit about what’s
there.
This is very important. You need to make sure that
you use the same address in signing up for the BARD
service that you used in signing up for the NLS
service. Because what’s going to happen is this
application process is going to go to Washington D.C.
to the Library of Congress there. They’re going to
check with your local library to make sure you’re a
BARD participant. So that’s why it’s important to sign
up with NLS at your local library first, because they
are going to check with them through the BARD
system to make sure that you are signed up.
In the sign-up process you will be entering your
address and an email address so that they can
contact you via email. You will instantly – once you go
through the application process – you’ll instantly
receive an email telling you that they have received
your information and they are going to check with
your local library. It may take a few days but then
they’ll get back to you. The process has gotten much
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 6 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
faster. They’ll get back with you and let you know
whether you’ve been accepted or not.
When you’ve been accepted, they’ll provide you with
a user name and a temporary password. The user
name is going to be your email address that you used
to sign up during the application process, and you’ll
have the temporary password. You’ll go to this
website, the log in site, and you’ll go to the ‘Edit’
fields, and go ahead and put your user name and
password in. That’s where we’re going to head to right
now.
[JAWS audio reads “Please log in”]. We’re at the top
of the page. Once you do log in with that temporary
password it is going to automatically force you to
generate your own password so it’s a standard thing
that a lot of websites do. You’ll have to have eight
characters, I think, and at least one number. So you’ll
sign in using that – and they’ll make you click on a
user agreement for the site – and then you’ll be in and
ready to start exploring the site and start downloading
content. And so we’re assuming now that you’ve been
through that process, you’re at the top of the web
page here and you’re ready to enter the website.
So I’m going to head on down to the user name area
[JAWS audio reads “Enter email address colon edit…
Type in text”], and it’s asking for the email address
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 7 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
once you’re there. I’m going to type my email address
in [JAWS audio reads W-A-L-K-E-R at H-A-D-L-E-Y
period E-D-U”]. It’s walker@hadley.edu so if you do
have questions that we can’t cover today you can
email me and I’ll attempt to help you out. So I’ll tab on
down [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Password edit…
Type in text”]. There’s my password area so I’ll type
my password in [JAWS audio reads “Star-star-starstar-star-star-star-star”]. Alright, I’ll tab on down to the
log in [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Log in button”]. And
we’ll log into the website [JAWS audio reads
“Space… Log in button… Three percent… One
hundred percent… BARD main page…Lists books
alphabetically”].
Alright. So we are on the BARD main page and I
silenced it there. I’m going to get to the top of the
page [JAWS audio reads “BARD main page”], and we
are on the BARD main page. Now the BARD main
page is like your hub. This is the first place it’s going
to take you when you log in. This is the way that
you’re going to access all the content that is on the
website, so you’ll be able to move down this page and
see that there are several different ways to search.
I’m going to show you all the different ways to search
the website and to look for information.
So, you could simply arrow down this page and it
might not be a bad idea if you’re new to the website
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 8 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
just to down arrow through the whole webpage and to
see everything that is on the webpage. However, I
have found that the way to access pretty much
everything on the site is by ‘tabbing’ down this page.
So we can hit the ‘Tab’ key and it’s going to take us to
every main piece of content and every way to find
content on the website. So I am going to hit my ‘Tab’
key here and it will take us to the first link on the page
[JAWS audio reads “Tab… Recently added books
having level three link”]. Alright.
Here we are with the recently added books. Now, I
was part of the pilot program for testing the website
and helping them get it set up. This was the place that
was exciting to go every Friday. You wanted to check
this area out on Fridays because that’s the day they
added all the new content. So you would go there and
sometimes they would add as much as fifty or sixty
books every Friday. But now things have changed.
You can go to this link and they’re adding content
almost every single day. So you can check this link
out and they’ll have new content added, and the day it
was added to the link. So you can check that out
every day if you’re interested to see the new types of
content they’re adding to the website.
So we’ll tab on down [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Most
popular books heading level three link visited”]. I love
going here. This is the most popular books and when
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 9 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
I say, or when it says, most popular, it’s not
necessarily talking about the best sellers’ list – but in
saying that there are a lot of best-sellers on this list –
this is talking about the most popular books that
BARD participants are downloading. So it’s kind of
interesting to go if you don’t know the book you are
searching for, if you’re just browsing for a book,
sometimes this is a good area to look because you
can get ideas of what’s popular out there.
So, we will come back here and download a book
later on from this link, but we’re going to ‘Tab’ on
down the page [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Search the
collection colon edit… Type in text”]. This is a way of
searching the entire collection. This is a simple key
word search. So if you wanted to search for a book, if
you knew the title of the book that you’re looking for,
this is where you would go to actually type that in. If
you were looking for Harry Potter, you would type
‘Harry Potter’ here, you would ‘Tab’ over to the ‘Go’
button [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Go button”], and
you would activate that with the ‘Space’ bar, and it
would bring you up a list of all the Harry Potter books
or any search results that had ‘Harry Potter’ in them.
So I’m going to ‘Shift-tab’ back into that ‘Edit’ field
[JAWS audio reads “Shift-tab… Search the collection
colon edit… Type in text”]. Another way you can type
using this search field here is to type the author’s
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 10 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
name in there. So if you were looking for a Stephen
King book you could type his name in here. In saying
that let me tell you that the authors are all listed on
the BARD website by last name first, so that is a
helpful tip to know.
If you are searching for a certain author like Stephen
King, you’re going to want to put their name in here
last name first, so it would be King – actually, you’re
going to want to put King comma space Stephen –
and that’s going to really help to narrow your search
results because if you simply put King and then
Stephen it’s going to search the entire collection and
it’s going to bring up book lists with the word ‘King’ in
it, so it’s going to have kingdom, Kinsley,
Kingsberry… so anything with the word ‘King’ in it, it’s
going to bring up. Maybe that’s a helpful hint for you.
If you are looking for an author, you can type their last
name, comma, space, first name so that would
narrow your search results quite a bit.
Alright, so let’s ‘Tab’ on down [JAWS audio reads
“Tab… Go button”], and there’s the ‘Go’ button for
that edit field [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Browse by
author’s last name combo box… Select the letter and
change the selection using arrow keys”]. Okay, now
they did throw us into a combo box here for choosing
the first letter of the author’s last name so if you
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 11 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
wanted to you can arrow down this combo box [JAWS
audio reads “A-B-C-…”].
If we were searching for K [JAWS audio reads “D-EF-G-H-I-J-K…”], we’ve landed on the ‘K’. We ‘Tab’
over to the ‘Go’ button [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Go
button”], activate that with the ‘Space’ bar and it would
list every single author whose last name starts with a
‘K’. So in saying that, you know that you are going to
end up with a bunch of pages of Ks and you’ll have to
go to the next page and the next page and the next
page. Stephen King, since we’re on the subject of
Stephen King, will probably be five or six pages,
maybe seven pages, into that. So if you know how to
spell the author’s last name, better to do a keyword
search, I think, then to go by the author’s last name.
However, if you just know an author’s last name, and
you’re sketchy on their first name, this might be a way
that you have to search for an author by last name.
But know that you are really going to have to do some
digging here. It’s going to list the authors’ last names
and then all the books that they’ve written under their
names. So if you want to just browse that way, it
might be a good way to browse.
You can also – I’m going to ‘Shift-tab’ [JAWS audio
reads “Shift-tab…Browse by author’s last name
combo box… K… To change the selection, use the
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 12 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
arrow keys”]. You can also type the ‘R’, so if we were
looking for Raleigh we could just type ‘R’ and just go
over, so that might save you some time [JAWS audio
reads “Tab…Go button”].
So let’s keep looking down the page [JAWS audio
reads “Tab… Browse by book title combo
box…Select the letter… To change the selection, use
the arrow keys”]. Now, this is going to work exactly
the same way. We’re in another combo box. This is
going to work exactly the same way that the
searching by author’s last name worked. You’re going
to arrow down [JAWS audio reads “A-B-C-D…”]. So if
you really wanted to pull up the Harry Potter books
you would type in ‘H’ and then tab over to the ‘Go’
button [JAWS audio reads “H…Tab…Go button”] and
activate that with the ‘Space’ bar.
Now remember, it’s going to bring up every single title
that starts with the letter ‘H’ so you’re going to have to
do a lot of digging to find the book that you want. But
if you’re just browsing, that may be something that
you want to do, is to look by the title this way. Better
to do a keyword search if you’re looking for a specific
title though.
Alright, so let’s ‘Tab’ on down the screen. This next
way is by subject [JAWS audio reads “Tab… By
subject combo box… Select a subject… To change
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 13 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
the subject, use the arrow keys.”] Now, I have been a
teacher for many years, elementary ed. computer lab
teacher as a matter of fact, so I love to help kids find
books in a subject area that they like and this is a
great place to go.
You can ‘Tab’, you can arrow down, and another
combo box here [JAWS audio reads “All fiction”].
Here’s all fiction, so if you’re just browsing for books
this is a great way to do it; [JAWS audio reads “All
non-fiction”] All non-fiction; [JAWS audio reads
“Adventure”] Adventure; [JAWS audio reads “Animals
and wildlife”] Animals and wildlife. My daughter loves
animals so this is where she would go and she would
‘Tab’ over to the ‘Go’ button, activate that, and it
brings up tons of animals and wildlife.
[JAWS audio reads “Arts”], there you go, Arts; [JAWS
audio reads “Astronomy”] Astronomy; [JAWS audio
reads “Best sellers”] Best sellers. This is where I like
to go is down to the best sellers subject. And then you
‘Tab’ over to the ‘Go’ button [JAWS audio reads
“Tab… Go button”]. If we were to activate that it would
bring up a list of all the best sellers. Not necessarily
the most current best sellers but just a list of best
sellers that you could browse through to find some
really good reading.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 14 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Alright, so I think there’s one more link that has to do
with books [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Foreign
language collection heading level three link”]. Okay,
so this is great. They have a foreign language
collection on BARD and I’m going to give you a little
more information by ‘arrowing’ down [JAWS audio
reads “Specially acquired books produced abroad”].
These are specially-acquired books produced abroad.
We’re not really going to get into this area but I did
want you to know that there are a lot of foreign
language books on the BARD system here, so that’s
great.
And that’s the last of the ways to search for books. In
just a couple of minutes we’re going to get into
actually performing a search and seeing how the book
was laid out, but that’s the last of the ways to look for
books. So you can go to the recently added books,
most popular books, do a keyword search, search by
the author’s last name, search by the initial letter of
the title, or you could search by subject area. So
those are the different ways to find the book contents
on BARD.
Okay. But there is a different kind of content on this
website that I love to explore and it’s the magazines.
So I’m going to ‘Tab’ on down – remember, I’m still
tabbing down the screen, so it’s real easy to navigate
this website [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Recently
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 15 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
added magazine issues heading level three link”].
Okay, so that’s the recently added magazines and if I
wanted to I could access this and it’s going to bring up
every single magazine issue that’s brand new. So it
would bring up the most current month from all the
different magazines that BARD has.
However, I like to search by looking for a particular
magazine, so I’m going to ‘Tab’ on down to be able to
select [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Magazine by title
colon combo box... Select the magazine. To change
the selection, use the arrow keys”]. So I can select the
exact magazine that I want to be able to listen to here.
I think there are over forty magazines in this list so
BARD is offering a lot of magazines to choose from.
So we could arrow down this list [JAWS audio reads
“American Heritage….Analog…Asimov Science
Fiction…”], so there’s some great science fiction…
[JAWS audio reads “Atlantic Monthly…Bon
Apétit…”]… Dame Turcot and her cooking would love
to go to that magazine, I’m sure… [JAWS audio reads
“Choice Magazine Listening… Consumer Reports…”]
Now I could use the initial letter to jump directly to a
magazine [JAWS audio reads “N National
Geographic”]. I typed in ‘N’ and came up with National
Geographic. The teacher in me loves the stuff they
have for kids, so if I wanted to arrow down [JAWS
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 16 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
audio reads “National Geographic Kids Cricket…
Select…”]. To me that’s great that they have
magazines on here for kids and I love the ability to
move from one article to the next very easily within
NLS player and I’ll show you how to do that.
We will come back here and download a magazine
but let’s get through the rest of this website first
[JAWS audio reads “Tab… Go button”]. You would
select the magazine you want and hit that ‘Go’ button.
So we’d ‘Tab’ on down [JAWS audio reads
“Tab…Update account settings heading level three
link”]. Okay, so the update account settings button.
This is where you are going to want to go if you want
to change your user name; so if your email address
changed or if you needed to change your password
for some reason, this is where you would need to go.
Also, if you needed to get a key for a device, and I
told myself I was not going to go into this but it might
come up later on so, if you’re looking for keys to
activate your device that’s not an NLS player, this is
where you would go to request a key. And it probably
will come up later on so we’ll talk about keys probably
at some point today.
I’ll ‘Tab’ on down [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Help
heading level three link”]. There is a great help link
here. Another good place to get help is at
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 17 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
BARDtalk.com. This is another great place to get help
with NLS. It’s not affiliated by NLS but it is NLS users
or BARD users that set up this website; great tutorials
there on all the different devices. Some great audio
podcasts there as well, so go there and check that out
if you need help.
I’ll ‘Tab’ on down [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Latest
DTB firmware and installation instructions heading
level three link”]. Okay, so that’s the latest digital
talking book firmware. You really want to stay up to
date on your software for your NLS player. When I
talk about downloading, extracting, and transferring
books in just a bit, you’re going to use the same
process to download, extract, and transfer this
firmware so no stresses over this. We’ll talk about that
in just a bit.
[JAWS audio reads “Tab…TLBPH dot TN dot gov
send mail in”] Okay, so I am accessing this through
the Tennessee website. And that’s a great place to
send feedback to your local library. If you want books
to be added, or if you’re having trouble with the
website, you really need to let them now. There’s
going to be a link on your local site there so that you
can send feedback and information.
‘Tab’ on down [JAWS audio reads “Tab… The
Tennessee Library for the Blind and Physically
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 18 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Handicapped home page link”], and there’s the home
page link for the Tennessee libraries. I’ll ‘Tab’ on
down [JAWS audio reads “Tab…BARD main page
link”]. Alright and there is a BARD main page link on
here. The great thing about the BARD main page link
is it’s going to save all of the settings that I’ve done
and so when I selected National Geographic or any
other initial letters for the search results that I did up
on the page, it’s going to save those. If I wanted to
start fresh with a new fresh page, I would just activate
that and it would clear everything off and put me right
back at the top of the BARD main page.
So let me arrow down to, I think, the last link [JAWS
audio reads “Tab…Log out visit as link”]. Okay, so log
out. Yeah, we want to make sure we log out if we are
accessing from a library or from someone else’s
house, someone else’s home, and organization. If
you’ve been using your BARD site there you want to
log out because you don’t want the person that is
coming up behind you to have access to your account
and to be able to go in and make changes to that.
This is secure. We are trusted by the publishers that
this content is going to be secure, so when you’re
finished, make sure you just log out.
And I’m going to get back to the top of the website by
‘Ctrl-home’ [JAWS audio reads “BARD main page”].
And I’m back up to the top. Alright, that is just moving
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 19 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
through the website at the BARD main page and
we’ve taken a look at all the different ways to access
the different types of content in different ways. So if
you know what you are looking for, you probably want
to do a keyword search. If you are just browsing, you
have tons of ways to do it.
I’m going to show you one of my favorite ways and it’s
actually going down to the most popular books area,
so I’m going to ‘Tab’ a couple of times to get back
down there [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Recently
added books heading level three link… Tab… Most
popular books heading level three link visited”]. Okay,
so here I am on the most popular books. I’m going to
activate that by pressing the ‘Space’ bar [JAWS audio
reads “Space… One percent… One hundred
percent… Selection by most popular books,
displaying items one through forty of forty… Most
popular BARD downloads in the last ninety days,
heading level two”].
Okay, I’m going to pause that and get back to the top
of the page [JAWS audio reads “Selection by most
popular books displaying items one through forty of
forty”], and there are forty different books on this
page; forty of the most popular books that BARD
listeners are downloading. Okay, what we have is a
list of books. These are the most popular books.
However, if we were to have done a keyword search,
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 20 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
or if we were to have searched by author’s last name
or even book title, the book formats – once the search
comes up – is going to be just like it is presented on
this website. So you’re going to have a listing of the
books, and then there is going to be descriptors about
the book underneath each of the book titles. Now I
could just jump from book title to book title by
pressing the ‘H’ for headings, but I’m going to arrow
down to show you how easy it is.
I’m just going to arrow down this page to move
through the different books. Well, there are a couple
of things that we’ll have to get through at the top of
the page but we’ll just arrow down to show you how
easy it is [JAWS audio reads “Heading level two most
popular BARD downloads in the last ninety days”];
just the heading. [JAWS audio reads “Heading level
two fiction, heading level four”]; the first books that are
listed here are just going to be fiction books and I
think our first book is coming next.
Let’s see what the most popular books are [JAWS
audio reads “Heading level four The Hunger Games
book one”]. Okay, ‘The Hunger Games’. Who would
have thought it, right? There is a movie out and
everything right now with the Hunger Games going
on. Alright, so now that we’re on a book, the structure
is laid out exactly the same for each book.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 21 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So I’m going to slowly arrow down through the
descriptions for the book so that you can get used to
how the books are going to be laid out on the website.
First it’s going to be author, the reader of the book,
and the link for the book. So I’m going to arrow down
[JAWS audio reads “Collins, Suzanne, Read by Aaron
Jones, Reading time nine hours fourteen minutes”]. I
arrow down again, it’s going to give us the subject
matter [JAWS audio reads “Young adult”]; it’s young
adult.
There’s always a blank line to separate this [JAWS
audio reads “Blank”], and then it gives us a paragraph
description. I’m going to have to arrow down a couple
of times to get all the way through the paragraph
[JAWS audio reads “In the future North America
Panem rulers maintain control through a televised
survival competition pitting teens from twelve districts
in a fight to the death… Some violence... 2008]; and
this was released in 2008.
I love the fact in the descriptor there that they tell you
a lot of information. There is some violence in this
book. Remember that our goal is to have students
being able to download their own content, and if
you’re a parent the goal is to have your child
downloading their own content. It’s really nice that
NLS puts a lot of useful information here because we
can find out what they are listening to on their devices
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 22 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
and go back to the NLS website and make sure that
it’s appropriate content for them to be listening to. So I
love the fact that they put a lot of information here.
There is a lot of great stuff for kids on the website
here and we don’t want to discourage them from
downloading their own stuff, but it’s great that we can
monitor that content.
Alright, I’m going to arrow down to the link for
downloading it [JAWS audio reads “Visited link for
downloads… The Hunger Games book one… DB
68,384, heading level four”]. It gives us our catalogue
number at the end; DB stands for digital book. So,
great, that is pretty much it. You have the title, the
author, who read the book, the length of the book.
Below that you have the subject matter, you always
have a blank line, and then you have a paragraph
descriptor and then you have the link to download.
And that’s how every search is going to be laid out.
So I would like to head down through a couple of
more books just to show you how that’s laid out again.
So I’m just going to continue ‘arrowing’ down the page
[JAWS audio reads “Heading level four… Zero Day”];
‘Zero Day’ is the name of the book. I’m going to arrow
down [JAWS audio reads “Baldacci, David. Read by
Jim Zeeger… Reading time fourteen hours, sixteen
minutes”], and that’s about a typical amount of time
for a book is fourteen hours.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 23 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Arrow down [JAWS audio reads “Suspense”]; this is a
suspense book. [JAWS audio reads “Blank”]; blank
line, and here’s our paragraph: [JAWS audio reads
“When the colonel and his family are murdered in a
remote west Virginia home, the army sends
investigator John Polar to the crime scene. Polar
arrives to find yet another body and joins forces with
local detective investigating the case, Sergeant
Samantha Cole. Violence and strong language. Best
seller. 2011…”]. Okay, so this is a newer best seller
and, remember, violence and some strong language.
It’s great that they have that amount of information.
Let’s arrow down through one more book and then
we’ll download one. So I’m going to arrow down
through this next one [JAWS audio reads “Link
downloads Zero Day DB 73,933, heading level four”].
Excuse me, we do have the download link underneath
the descriptor paragraph. So now we’ll hit the next
book [JAWS audio reads “Heading level four…
Catching Fire, Hunger Games book two”]. The
Hunger Games series continues, alright. So this is
book two of ‘The Hunger Games’, so we’ll arrow down
[JAWS audio reads “Collins, Suzanne. Read by Aaron
Jones… Reading time nine hours, thirty-one
minutes”]. Very popular book. I’ll arrow down [JAWS
audio reads “Young adult”]; it’s young adult. [JAWS
audio reads “Blank”]; blank line.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 24 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
And the paragraph: [JAWS audio reads “Victoria’s
District Twelve tributes Katniss Everdeen from the
Hunger Games left paren RC 68,384, DR 18,848 right
paren have secured safety and plenty for themselves
and their families, but because they went by defying
the rules, they have unwittingly incited a rebellion.
Some violence... 2009…”]. Okay, so this is a 2009
book.
You notice it gave you the catalogue number of
another book when it was doing the descriptor there?
If you have a series of books it will give you the
catalogue number so that you can go and look up the
book before that, so that’s really kind of nice. You
could actually type that catalogue number right into
the search string that was on the BARD main page
and it would bring up that book. So that’s great if you
have a series that you’re listening to.
And I will arrow down to the download link “[JAWS
audio reads “Visited link downloads Catching Fire
Hunger Games book two… DB 69,689… Heading
level four”] Okay, now I’ve already downloaded a
couple of books so that we could demonstrate a
couple of things later on, but I’m going to show you
how to begin the download process here. So I’m
going to activate this by pressing the ‘Space’ bar and
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 25 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
it’s going to pull up a dialogue box where we’ll want to
go search for the ‘Save’ button on that dialogue box.
So, I’m going to activate this by pressing the ‘Space’
bar [JAWS audio reads “Space... One percent... One
hundred percent… File download dialogue.. Do you
want to open or save this file? Name colon cancel
button… To activate, press space bar”]. Okay, so I
don’t want to cancel this. I want to ‘Tab’ on through
this until I find the ‘Save’ button [JAWS audio reads
“Tab… What’s the risk? link…”]. There’s no risk, we’re
on the NLS website so we’re safe. [JAWS audio reads
“Tab… Open button… To activate, press space
bar…].
Okay, I am going to say a common mistake that users
generally make is by hitting this ‘Open’ button. They
think “Well, let’s open this and let it play it,” but what’s
going to happen if you activated this button is it’s
going to search for software that’s capable of playing
this content on your computer, and that’s not possible.
There is no software that is going to be able to play it,
so we want to ‘Tab’ to the ‘Save’ button [JAWS audio
reads “Tab… Save button… To activate, press space
bar.”]
Our goal is to save this to the computer. Now, when I
activate this space bar it’s going to pull up a ‘Save as’
dialogue box. Most of you have seen a ‘Save as’ box.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 26 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
You can point at the location that you want to save
the file. You can rename it. We’re not going to rename
it, but that’s what’s going to come up is a typical ‘Save
as’ box. I probably will mute it because it’s going to
give us so much information. We don’t need to hear
all that [JAWS audio reads “Space… Zero percent of
download from book from .loc.gov completed
dialogue…dot, dot, dot underline ‘Games’… underline
‘Book’… underline ‘2-6 DB 69,689 dot zip from the
start loc.gov estimated…”].
And it is, it’s giving us way too much information there
but we’re in a simple dialogue box and it has places in
the edit field where we could rename the book. We
don’t want to rename it. Let’s just leave its name,
alright? And I’m going to tab down to the ‘Save’
button. Now, this is where – if you wanted to – you
could ‘Shift-tab’ into the tree view and change
locations of where you wanted to download this file,
however, I’m using Windows 7 so it typically
downloads into a ‘Downloads’ folder, and that’s fine
with me. I’m going to let it download there.
If you’re using XP, more than likely it’s going to save it
in your ‘My Documents’ folder. I used to like to make
an e-books folder in there and save it in there to keep
everything separated. That’s your choice if you
wanted to ‘Shift-tab’ and move the location, but I’m
just going to tab down to the ‘Save’ button and let it
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 27 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
save it into a ‘Downloads’ folder [JAWS audio reads
“Tab… Save as type… Tab… Tool bar… Tab…Save
button…To activate, press space bar…”].
I’m going to activate this [JAWS audio reads
“Space…DB-Collins, underline Suzanne dash
catching underline fire dash underline games
underline book underline 2 dash DB 69,689… Zero
percent… To close this dialogue box when download
completes check box not checked… To check press
space bar Alt plus ‘C’... One percent… Three
percent... Seven percent…”]; and off it goes. So it’s
downloading and it’s going to continually give us
percentages as it is downloading.
It’s going to go really slow, that’s why I went ahead
and downloaded a couple of books for the extraction
process. But I wanted to show you that this is what’s
going to happen. When this finishes you’ll get a little
chime and you’ll go down and you can – you can
close this dialogue box when you are finished
downloading this and it puts you right back into the
BARD menu. So I want to tab down to the close
button, we’re not going to save this [JAWS audio
reads “Tab…Cancel button… To activate, press
space bar… Thirty five percent…”]. I’m going to
cancel this download because it’s going to take a
while.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 28 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
[JAWS audio reads “Selection by most popular books
display an item…”]. It put us right back on the
website. Books typically take fifteen, twenty minutes
to download for a larger book unless you have a really
fast internet browser or a really fast modem.
Sometimes it can take as long as thirty minutes
depending upon when you go on. If you go on at a
peak time, when it’s really busy, it can take a little bit
longer, but hey, that beats having to call and wait for
the cartridge to come in the mail in a couple of days.
So fifteen, twenty minutes, I can do that.
So we’re going to back out of this ‘Most Popular
Books’ page and get back on the main page. I’m just
going to hit the ‘Back space’ button [JAWS audio
reads “BARD main page… Link…Visited heading
level three link most popular books”]. I’ll mute it there.
Let’s get back to the top of the page ‘[JAWS audio
reads “BARD main page”]. We talked earlier about
magazines. Let’s go down and get a magazine.
So I’m going to use the same process. Bear with me,
because I’m going to be ‘tabbing’ all the way down
this screen. Okay, so this is the ‘Recently added
magazines’ link. Now I could activate this and it would
bring up a list of all the recently added magazines,
however, I like to look for a certain magazine so let’s
jump down [JAWS audio reads “Tab… magazines by
title colon combo box… National Geographic Kids…
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 29 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
To change the selection, use the arrow keys”]. You
know, I could change it by typing in the initial letters to
go to… [JAWS audio reads “R… Reader’s Digest…
Smart Computing”] Smart Computing, something I go
to quite a bit, but I am going to go back to [JAWS
audio reads “National Geographic”].
I really want you to see how the National Geographic
for Kids – I’ll type the ‘N’ again [JAWS audio reads “N
National Geographic Kids”] and let’s see how it is to
move around a magazine. I’m going to ‘Tab’ over to
the ‘Go’ button [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Go button”]
and we’ll activate this. When I activate this it’s going
to open another webpage and we’re going to be
presented with a list of links that just have these
magazine issues on them. It’s going to be the most
recent at the top.
As we ‘Tab’ down it will take us all the way back
through the past issues. So I’m going to go ahead and
activate this [JAWS audio reads “Space… One
percent…Go button… One hundred
percent…Selection by magazine”]. I’m going to
silence it and I’m going to the top of the page [JAWS
audio reads “Selection by magazine title displaying
items one through eleven of eleven”]. Okay, so there
are eleven different magazines, past issues, on this
page. I’m going to ‘Tab’. We’re going to hit the ‘Start
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 30 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
over’ link [JAWS audio reads “Tab… Start over visited
link”].
Now, most search pages have a ‘Start over’ button at
the top if you wanted to go back to the main page
there. I’m going to ‘Tab’ on down [JAWS audio reads
“Tab… Download National Geographic Kids… left
paren May 2012 right paren Cricket, left paren May
slash June 2012 right paren visited link”]. Okay, so
this is the most recent issue that they have is the May
issue. I could ‘Tab’ down to see the previous month
[JAWS audio reads “Tab…Download National
Geographic Kids left paren April 2012 right paren
Cricket left paren April 2012 right paren link”]. And
that is April.
I’m going to go back up to May [JAWS audio reads
“Shift-tab download National Geographic Kids left
paren May 2012…”], so that’s May. We know it’s a
link because it said download, so I’m going to press
the ‘Space’ bar to download this [JAWS audio reads
“Space… One percent… One hundred percent… File
download dialogue… Do you want to open or save
this file? Name colon cancel button… To activate,
press space bar”]. And we’re going to look again for
that ‘Save’ button so I’ll ‘Tab’ through [JAWS audio
reads “Tab… What’s the risk?... Tab… Open
button…Tab…Save button… To activate, press space
bar…”]. That’s easy.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 31 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
I’m going to activate this with the ‘Space’ bar and it’s
going to present us with a ‘Save as’ dialogue box
[JAWS audio reads “Space… Zero percent of
download from loc.gov completed dialogue. Save as
dialogue edit combo… DB dash National underline
Geographic underline Kids underline…”]. Okay. I’m
not going to have it read all of that. I’m going to ‘Tab’
down to the ‘Save’ button on this dialogue box [JAWS
audio reads “Tab…Save as Type… Tab… Tool bar…
Tab…Save button. To activate, press space bar”].
Okay.
So there we are with the save button and I’ll activate
that and we’ll download this magazine [JAWS audio
reads “Space DB National underline Geographic
underline Kids underline left paren May underline
2012 right paren dash Cricket underline left paren
May dash June underline 2012 right paren… Zero
percent… Close this dialogue box when download
completes check box not checked… To check, press
space bar Alt plus ‘C’… Fifteen percent… Thirty-three
percent…”]. Okay, so we’re really moving through
this. Today it’s downloading pretty fast.
Magazines are a lot smaller so it’s not going to take
as long to download a magazine. We’ll just wait for
this to download, almost there. Alright and there’s our
chime to let us know that it’s downloaded. There are a
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 32 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
couple of buttons I wanted to show you here. So I’m
going to ‘Tab’ down to these buttons [JAWS audio
reads “Tab…Open button… To activate press space
bar Alt plus ‘O’”]. There’s the ‘Open’ button.
Remember we want to stay away from that so we’re
just going to ‘Tab’ on through [JAWS audio reads
“Tab…Open folder button… To activate, press space
bar Alt plus ‘F’”].
Now, we will be coming back to this one. This is the
‘Open folder’ button, so when I activate this, it’s going
to open up the folder where we’ve been downloading
our files. That’s really handy so that you don’t have to
go digging back through your computer to find these
files that we’ve been downloading. But I want to ‘Tab’
on over [JAWS audio reads “Tab…Close button…To
activate, press space bar”]. Okay, so if I wanted to, I
could close this window and it would place us back
into our BARD window, our BARD website here, and
allow us to start downloading more content.
But I’m not going to close this, I’m going to ‘Shift-tab’
[JAWS audio reads “Shift-tab… Open folder button…
To activate, press space bar Alt plus ‘F’…”]; back to
that ‘Open folder’ button. Now when I activate this it’s
going to open, again, the folder where all of our items
have been downloaded. So I’ll go ahead and activate
this by pressing the space bar [JAWS audio reads
“Space… Windows Explorer… Items new list box
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 33 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
read only…To move to an item press the arrow
keys… Items new multi select list box…Not selected
DB dash Collins underline Suzanne dash
underline…”]. Okay, so there is ‘The Hunger Games’
that I downloaded earlier to demonstrate extracting
later.
I’m going to go up [JAWS audio reads “Items new
multi select list box DB dash Collins underline
Suzanne dash underline Games…”]; The Hunger
Games. [JAWS audio reads “DB dash National
underline Geographic underline Kids underline left
paren May underline…”]; so there is the National
Geographic magazine we downloaded, and I think I
have a Harry Potter book [JAWS audio reads “DB
dash Rowling underline J dot K dash Harry underline
Potter underline…”]. Okay, so we have these
compressed files and we’ll talk about what
compressed files are in just a bit but I would like to
head over and open the floor up for some questions.
So if you have any questions, now is the time.
Doug
Hello everyone, this is Doug your moderator. Two
questions came in to the text chat box while Douglas
was presenting. I’ll ask those now and then we’ll have
probably about two minutes for some questions and
then we will give the presentation back over to
Douglas so he can continue. The first question,
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 34 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Douglas, is: Is there a way to find the different local
sites for each state? I believe this question came up
when you made reference to the Tennessee library
services that were on the BARD page. So if a student
is registered will it automatically come up within their
own state, or is there a way that they can locate other
libraries in their state? The second question is: When
is Braille coming to BARD? So I’ll release the
microphone to Douglas.
Douglas Walker
Oh, my goodness. I think Ruth last week touched on
the fact that when you sign up for the service and you
log in to the website it’s going to look at a local server
and point you towards your local BARD service. I
believe that’s what she said. We’ll have to go back
and check that. When is Braille coming? I don’t know.
We still have the web Braille end of things, hopefully
Braille is coming soon. I do know that they are
developing an app for Smart phones right now, so
hopefully within the next year we’ll have the NLS
BARD app for at least ‘i’ devices to begin with, the
iPhone and the iPad.
Braille is something that’s coming and I can’t wait.
We’re huge supporters at Hadley with Braille and we
want to see Braille on this. As a matter of fact, that’s
where BARD comes from, B-A-R-D, Braille and Audio
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 35 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Reading Download. So Braille is coming. Right now
it’s just audio so we’ll all have to wait.
Lynn
Douglas, this is fantastic. This is Lynn. I’m also a
teacher at Hadley. I know that there is a way you can
put more than fifty selections on a page. I have mine
set to a thousand, I think, so you don’t have to go
through – it loads slower but, where is that choice?
Douglas Walker
That may be under the user account settings. I’m not
exactly sure. I like to limit mine to fifty per page. It
does slow it down quite a bit. You know, you can
always, if you bring up a page and it has a lot of items
on there, or if you are searching for an author by
using the combo box where you have to go page by
page, the best way to look to see where you are in the
alphabet is just to jump to the end of the page and
then ‘Shift-tab’ by links, backwards, so you can see
who the last author is on that page. And then when
you jump to the next page, see who the first and last
authors are on that page. That’s a way for you to
narrow it down.
Or you can just do a ‘Find’ on that page and find –
you know, the ctrl ‘F’ – and do a search string in that
and actually find something that’s on the whole page
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 36 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
so sort of narrow things down if you have a lot of
items on the page.
Linda Perry
Hi Doug, it’s Linda Perry and I was just wondering if I
make an e-books folder to put all my BARD books
into, can I set that as my default somehow so that
when I am downloading it will automatically go there
instead of ‘My Documents’?
Douglas Walker
You can, and it’s going to point back. We’ll look at this
in just a bit. When you start moving files over to your
device it’s going to point to the last folder that you
were looking at, so if you are downloading –
especially if you’re using XP like you’re talking about
– and you had created an e-books folder, it’s going to
look at the last folder that you were downloading, so
that’s kind of comforting.
I came from a situation where I worked in an
elementary computer lab and it was really a great
idea to have different kids with different folders, like ebooks and their first and last names on that. But it’s
also a great teaching tool to be able to teach how to
move between folders. So, yes, you can do that and
it’s a good thing to do to keep everything separated in
there.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 37 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So we need to move on. The time is getting away
from us. So we’re going to move right into – we’ve
done the downloading – now we’re going to move
right into extracting files. And we’re back in our
‘Downloads’ folder where we downloaded our content.
I’m going to move up [JAWS audio reads “DB dash
Collins underline Suzanne dash
underline…under…underline…”], and there’s ‘The
Hunger Games’, right there.
So, let’s talk a little bit about – this is kind of a scary
area for people when we start talking about what is a
compressed, what is a zip file – it can get scary when
you start talking about different types of files. All that a
file that has been compressed means is that it’s been
run through a piece of software to make it smaller.
There are a couple of reasons why you would want a
file to be smaller. The first one that BARD is happy
with is the fact that they can fit a lot more books on
their website or on their server. You have to make it
smaller so that they can all fit on there and you can
get tons and tons of content on there.
But the great reason for us, for you and I, is that it
makes the download process so much faster. If the
book was not compressed or zipped, it would take
forever to download the book if it would even be
capable of being downloaded at all. So you have to
compress the files to make them where we can
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 38 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
download them. So now we’re going to go through the
process to extract these compressed files. I don’t like
that word ‘extract’, it makes me think of the dentist for
some reason, so – and people are scared of that but
– it’s really an easy process to extract the files.
Windows did a great job of actually building a piece of
software that extracts it for us. So we really don’t have
to think much about it. Once we are sitting on the file
– let me just make sure I’m sitting on ‘The Hunger
Games’ here – [JAWS audio reads “DB dash Collins
underline Suzanne dash the underline, under,
underline Games…”], and I’m in my ‘Downloads’
folder now so I can right arrow to make sure that’s a
compressed folder [JAWS audio reads “Type
compressed left paren zipped right paren…”]. and it is
compressed. It’s been zipped up so I’ll move back
over to the title with my left arrow.
Alright, so we’re on that compressed folder and we
want to extract it. I’m going to press my ‘Applications’
key which is generally the third key to the right of the
‘Space’ bar there. You could go ‘Shift-F10’ to launch
your context menu there but I’m going to hit the
‘Applications’ menu on this. And I’m pointing at ‘The
Hunger Games’. I have that highlighted. It’s like rightclicking on it for you mouse users.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 39 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So let’s press the ‘Applications’ key [JAWS audio
reads “Applications context menu…To navigate,
press up or down arrow… ‘O’ Open”]. And then I’m
going to head down [JAWS audio reads “Open a new
window… E… To extract all dot, dot, dot…”] to the
‘Extract all’ button and we’re going to press ‘Enter’ on
that [JAWS audio reads “Enter… Leaving menu…
Downloads… Items new multi select list box… DB
slash Collins underline Suzanne dash underline
under, underline Games. Underline book underline
one dash DB 68,380”]. We don’t necessarily have to
listen to all of this. It simply gives us our file name
there.
[JAWS audio reads “File will be extracted to this folder
colon edit Douglas…”]; it tells us the folder that it’s
going to extract the files to. Now, when I extract this
it’s going to build a brand new folder that’s been
extracted in this same folder that we’re sitting in. So
it’s going to build another folder called exactly the
same name, except it will be an extracted file folder.
So I’m going to ‘Tab’ down to our ‘Extract’ button
[JAWS audio reads “Tab… Browse dot, dot, dot,
tab… Show extracted… Tab… Extract button… To
activate, press space bar…”], and I’m going to
activate that by hitting the space bar on it.
[JAWS audio reads “Space… Cancel button… To
activate, press space bar…Copying 22 items, left
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 40 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
paren 97.1 MB right paren dialogue… Cancel
button… To activate, press space bar… Eighteen
percent… One hundred percent… Downloads…
Items new multi select list box”]. Okay, so all it did
was copy those compressed folders out of the
compressed file and made us a whole other folder
there with the same name, only it’s not zipped up
anymore.
You have two folders in here in your Downloads folder
now, that are named the same thing. In working with
kids especially, I know that sometimes they’ll want to
put that compressed folder right on their cartridge and
it won’t work. So once I know that they’ve unpacked
that, I say, “Okay, we’re already pointing at that folder.
Let’s go ahead and just delete it.” So I’ll hit my delete
button on that [JAWS audio reads “Delete folder
dialogue. Are you sure you want to move this folder to
the recycle bin? DB dash Collins underline
Suzanne…”]. Yes, I do so I’m going to press the ‘Yes’
button right there [JAWS audio reads “Yes button…
Space… Downloads… Items new…”].
So, I just deleted that compressed folder so I don’t
have to worry about that folder anymore. [JAWS
audio reads “DB dash Collins underline Suzanne…”],
and there it is. That’s my uncompressed folder. I can
make sure it’s not compressed by right ‘arrowing’ over
to it [JAWS audio reads “Type file folder one of
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 41 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
three… DB dash Collins underline Suzanne underline
under, underline…”], and there it is. So we’ve totally
extracted that and it’s ready to be placed on the
cartridge.
So let’s practice by doing the National Geographic for
Kids [JAWS audio reads “DB National underline
Geographic underline Kids underline left paren May
underline 2012…”], and there it is. It’s a compressed
folder so I’m going to press the ‘Applications’ key on
that [JAWS audio reads “Applications… Context
menu… To navigate, press up or down arrow. O…
Open… O”]. I’m going to move down to the extraction
and extract all [JAWS audio reads “Open new…
Extract all dot, dot, dot…”]. Hit ‘Enter’ on that [JAWS
audio reads “Leaving menus…Downloads… Items
new multi select list box… DB select National
underline…”].
I’m going to move down until it says ‘Extract’ button
[JAWS audio reads “Tab… Browse dot tab…Show
extract…Tab…Extract button…To activate, press
space bar…”], and I’m going to press the ‘Space’ bar
on this and we’ll extract these files [JAWS audio
reads “Space… Cancel button…To activate, press
space bar…Copying 18 items left paren 32.2 MB right
paren dialogue… Cancel button… To activate, press
space bar…Sixty one percent…One hundred
percent… Downloads… Items new multi select…”].
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 42 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
And it just told me again I’m in my Downloads folder
so I know that I am back on top of the compressed
one that we just extracted, so I can delete that one. I’ll
just go ahead and hit my delete on it [JAWS audio
reads “Delete folder dialogue… Are you sure you
want to move this folder to the recycle bin? DB
National underline Geographic…”]. And I know I am
on the ‘Yes’ button here so I will press my ‘Space’ bar
[JAWS audio reads “Yes
button…Space…Downloads…Item view….”].
So there is no risk of me accidentally putting the
compressed file on there; I’m deleting those as we’re
going. It just makes it a little easier. [JAWS audio
reads “DB National underline Geographic underline
Kids underline left pair in May underline…”], now right
arrow to make sure… [JAWS audio reads “type file
folder…”] it’s a file folder, it’s no longer compressed.
We’ll left arrow back over to the title.
I’ll go down and we’ll do the Harry Potter one real
quick, and then we’ll start transferring these over to
our computer. So let me go down [JAWS audio reads
“DB dash Rowling underline J dot K dash Harry
underline Potter underline, underline, underline,
Sorcerer dash S underline Stone dash DB 47,260”].
Alright, so that is our compressed one. We’ll make
sure by arrowing to the right [JAWS audio reads
“State modified… Type compressed…left paren
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 43 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
zipped right paren…”] and it told us that the type so I’ll
go back over to the title [JAWS audio reads “DB dash
Rowling…”].
Alright, let’s unzip, extract ‘Harry Potter’. So I’m going
to press the ‘Applications’ key on that [JAWS audio
reads “Applications…Context menu… To navigate,
press up or down arrow…O… open… O”]. Go down
to the extract button [JAWS audio reads “Extract all
dot, dot, dot…”], and press ‘Enter’ on that [JAWS
audio reads “Leaving menus… Downloads… Items
new…”]. There’s our download. Our extraction
dialogue box popped up. I will hold ‘Tab’ down to the
‘Extract’ button [JAWS audio reads “Tab…dot, dot,
dot… Tab… Extract button…To activate, press space
bar”]. I’ll activate that by pressing the space bar
[JAWS audio reads “Space…Cancel button… To
activate, press space bar…Copying twenty-one items
left paren 93.5 MB right paren dialogue… Cancel
button…To activate, press space bar… Twenty-three
percent… One hundred percent…Downloads…Items
new multi select list…”].
Okay, any time it starts saying ‘Downloads’ you know
you’re back in the Downloads folder, where you were,
and that the process is complete. So I will delete that
zipped folder so we don’t have to worry about it
anymore by pressing the delete button [JAWS audio
reads “Delete folder dialogue. Are you sure you want
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 44 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
to move this folder to the recycle bin?”], and I’m on
the ‘Yes’ button [JAWS audio reads “Yes button….”]
So I will press the ‘Space’ bar and we’ll delete that
zipped file [JAWS audio reads “Space…
Downloads… Items new multi select list box…Not
selected DB dash Rowling underline J dot K dash
Harry underline Potter underline, underline, underline
Sorcerer dash S underline…”] Alright.
So here we are with three files and we have them in
our Downloads folder. They’re three extracted folders.
So that wasn’t so bad. My suggestion for people when
they start first downloading files from the NLS site is
to practice these three steps; practice, first of all,
downloading. You can download tons of content just
practicing. Don’t worry about extracting and
transferring right away, just practice your downloading
until you get really good at downloading. You can
always delete what you’ve downloaded. Practice
downloading the same thing over and over and get
really good at that.
And then practice extracting. So just download a
bunch of stuff and then practice extracting those files.
Remember the step in there that’s easy because it
puts you back in the file folder there and it points you
right back to the one that is zipped, so you just hit
delete and get rid of that one because you don’t want
those zipped files to get confused with the files that
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 45 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
you are transferring to your cartridge. Practice
extracting and then practice the transferring. It’s just
three steps, and if you follow this step by step you
shouldn’t have any problems in transferring it.
Okay, now we will start the transfer process. Okay, I
have purchased, you can purchase cartridges. Now,
you can use thumb drives, but we’re not going to talk
a lot about thumb drives today, or USB drives. You
can use a USB drive to transfer it too. You have to be
careful. As a matter of fact the BARDtalk website that
I mentioned earlier has a list of the thumb drives that
seem to work the best with the BARD content so you
might want to check there before you go purchase
one. I think the Kingston thumb drives tend to be the
best ones that work with the content. Just make sure
it’s not a US Smart drive. You want to stay away from
those.
Alright, so I purchased a cartridge from – you can get
them from various places – I got mine from APH,
which is America Printing House. I got the two
gigabyte cartridge and paid about twelve dollars for
this cartridge. The thing about using a cartridge is that
you have to buy a special cable to go with it, a special
USB cable. If you’re using the cable, there is a female
adapter on one end and a standard USB plug on the
other end. You plug the standard USB into the
computer, and most computers now have a lot of USB
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 46 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
ports on the back; some of them on the front
depending upon your computer.
I have mine plugged into the back of the computer
now. I have the female adapter in one hand and I’m
going to slide it over the end of the cartridge that has
like a thumb drive end. I’ll push those together and
you’ll hear the auto-run dialogue pop up on the
screen, or the auto-play. You’re going to want to listen
to the drive that it mentions when you plug it in
because you’re going to have to go searching for that
drive later on in this process. So you want to really
listen. You know it’s going to probably be called a
removable drive, because any drive that you plug up
to your computer is considered a removable drive but
you need to listen to the letter that it’s going to be
associated with, the name of the drive.
So I’m going to plug it in and we’ll listen for that letter
[JAWS audio reads “Symantec endpoint protection
colon auto-run has been blocked… Check the control
log for more details… Auto-play dialogue…
Removable disk left paren E colon right paren list
view open folder to view files using Windows
Explorer… To move items use the arrow keys”].
Okay, so it did say that it was the E drive on there,
and it almost gave my heart a little stop when it said
that Symantec endpoint had blocked my auto-play. I
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 47 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
was hoping that it wouldn’t keep if from popping up
there. We’ll have to find out what that’s about later on.
So it did say that it’s the E drive on there. So we’ll be
looking for the removable drive that is associated with
the E drive. We don’t need this dialogue box right now
so I am going to close this dialogue box by pressing
‘Escape’ [JAWS audio reads “Escape... Downloads…
Items view multi select list box DB dash Collins
underline…”], and that puts you right back in the
downloads folder and sitting right on ‘The Hunger
Games’ book there, I think. Yes. And we’re going to
want to transfer this over to this cartridge, the E drive,
the removable drive, we just plugged in.
A lot of people use a lot of different ways to transfer
content, however, there is a correct way to transfer
folders that some people don’t know about. There is a
correct way to move folders. If we simply copied and
pasted this into another drive we run the risk of
actually losing pieces of the folder, losing files from
within the folder, so we really want to do this the
correct way. And the correct way is to copy to a
folder. Once you learn this process, you’ll find that it’s
an easy way for moving any kind of content.
A lot of people want to use the ‘Applications’ key and
you can tend to lose files, especially if you moving a
whole folder, doing it that way. So we want to use the
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 48 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Windows key that’s best for copying an entire folder
over to another location. And you do that through
going through the menu. So let’s make sure we’re
pointing at the folder [JAWS audio reads “DB dash
Collins…”]. We are.
So we’re sitting on that folder and you want to access
the menu bar by going ‘Alt-E’ [JAWS audio reads “AltE menu files to move through items press up or down
arrow. F. Undo…”]. And now we’re going to arrow
down until we get to the ‘Copy to Folder’ button.
We’re going to go all the way down. Alright. So we
just went ‘Alt-E’ into the menu bar. And we moved
down the list until we got ‘Copy to folder’. We’re going
to activate this by pressing ‘Enter’ [JAWS audio reads
“Enter…Menu bar…Leaving menu
bar…Downloads…Items view multi select list
box…DB dash Collins underline Suzanne…”].
I’m not going to read this all to you but what we have
here is a dialog box and what this dialogue box does
is it gives us the ability to find a location where we
want to transfer this folder and then hit a button where
it says ‘Copy’. In fact, we’re sitting on the button that
says ‘Copy’ right now. And someone asked earlier in
the room about transferring it. This is an example of it
remembering the last place that you copied.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 49 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So I am going to ‘Tab’ into a tree-view [JAWS audio
reads “Tab… Cancel button…Tab…Tree view… Tree
view…Removable disk left paren E colon right paren
closed.”], and there you go. It’s actually pointing to the
last place that I transferred a book to, and that’s the E
drive, the E colon. I’m going to move off this by going
all the way to the top, ‘arrowing’ all the way to the top
[JAWS audio reads “Level zero… Desk top open…”].
So there is the desk top and if you’re used to moving
through a tree-view you’ll be really familiar with this.
Remember I tabbed into this so now I can tap the R to
move to my Removable drive [JAWS audio reads “R
level two, removable disk left paren E colon right
paren closed”]. It read that E colon drive and I’m
going to want to ‘Tab’ [JAWS audio reads
“Tab…Folder colon added…Tab…Make new
folder…Tab…Copy buttons…To activate, press space
bar… Alt plus ‘C’…”]. Okay, so all I’ve done right now,
once I’ve specified the location, all I’ve really done is
‘Alt-E’ into the ‘Edit’ menu and then I get down to
‘Copy to folder’, activated that, and it brought up this
dialogue box.
Once I have it pointing to my removable drive I just
have to hit the space bar on the ‘Copy’ button and it
puts me right on the copy button when this dialogue
box opens up. So I’ll just press the space bar to
activate the copy button [JAWS audio reads “Space…
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 50 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Copying twenty-three items… left paren 97.1 MB right
paren dialogue…Cancel button…To activate, press
space bar…Five percent…Forty percent…”]. And it’s
copying this over to my cartridge right now.
So, we should have our ‘Hunger Games’ book copied
over now. And remember, it just made a copy of that
so it left the original on our computer. So if there is a
problem or you wanted to delete it and come back
and listen to it later on, you still got that copy there.
So I’m going to arrow down to our next item [JAWS
audio reads “DB dash National underline Geographic
underline Kids underline left paren May underline…”].
And there is National Geographic Kids and I’m going
to go through the same process. But remember, this
time I’m not going to have to go searching for the
drive. It’s going to remember and then I’m just going
to hit the copy button there.
So I’m going to go ‘Alt-E’ [JAWS audio reads “AltE…Menu bar…Edit…To navigate, press left or right
arrow… E Context menu…Renew control plus Y
unavailable… To navigate…”]. Then, I’m going to
arrow down to ‘Copy to folder’ and I’ll press ‘Enter’ on
that [JAWS audio reads “Enter… Leaving
menu…Downloads…Items new multi select list box…
DB National underline Geographic underline…”]. And
I know I’m sitting on the ‘Copy’ button right now
[JAWS audio reads “Copy button…”], I could just
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 51 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
activate that with ‘Tab’ to make sure we’re still on that
removable disk drive; just out of paranoia I guess I
needed to check.
Get back down into that copy button. It’s a very simple
dialog box, only two things on it. So I’ll activate the
copy button and we’ll copy this over to our cartridge
[JAWS audio reads “Space…Nine percent… Copying
19 items left paren 32.2 MB right paren dialogue…
Cancel button… To activate, press space bar… One
hundred percent… Downloads… Items new multiselect list box…”]. Now I’m back in the Downloads
folder.
So we have two things copied to our cartridge. It’s an
easy process. You’ll have this later on because if you
want it, you can always go to past seminars [JAWS
audio reads “DB dash Rowling underline J dot K dash
Harry underline Potter underline, underline,
underline…”]. So there is my Harry Potter book. I’m
going to go ‘Alt-E’ [JAWS audio reads “Alt-E… Menu
bar…Edit…To navigate, press left or right arrow…
E…Menu…”], and we’ll go down to ‘Copy folder’
[JAWS audio reads “Copy the folder dot, dot, dot,
F…”]. I’ll press ‘Enter’ on that. [JAWS audio reads
“Enter… Leaving menus… Downloads… Items new
multi select list box…DB dash…”].
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 52 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
And I’m not even going to worry about whether it’s still
pointed at the removable drive. I’m going to trust it
this time. I know I’m on the copy button and I will just
press the ‘Space’ bar [JAWS audio reads
“Space…Three percent…Copying 22 items left paren
93.5 MB right paren dialogue…Cancel button…To
activate, press space bar... Thirty-nine percent…”].
Copying ‘Harry Potter’ over to the cartridge now, so
we should have three different items on there
whenever we’re ready to play those on our device.
[JAWS audio reads “One hundred percent…
Downloads…Items new multi select list box…DB
dash Rowling underling J dot K dash Harry…”]. And
it’s put us back in our dialog box here. So we’re
ready. We have our content on our cartridge. And
remember, it’s just a three step process: the
downloading, the extracting, and then the transferring.
If you can remember those three steps you’ll be great.
Again, practice one of them at a time to really get
good at doing that.
Okay. So we should have the content on our cartridge
now. I’m going to unplug the cartridge from the USB
cord. And I’m going to go ahead and turn on my
player here, my NLS player [NLS player audio reads
“Press any button to learn about it’s function”]. Okay,
this is a great player just for that reason. I know I’ve
mentioned it a couple of times that I’ve taught in an
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 53 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
elementary lab. That’s great for anyone to have the
ability with no cartridge in there, if you just press a
button it automatically tells you what that button does.
And that’s fantastic. If I’m just searching around, when
I get the player and I start pressing buttons, I can
learn how to use this pretty fast.
I’m going to go ahead and press where I know the
‘Play’ button is, and show you how this works. I’m not
going to put the cartridge in just yet, but I’m going to
press that ‘Play’ button [NLS player audio reads
“Play…Stop… To start or stop playing a book, use the
large play-stop button. When the book is playing,
press this same button to stop the player. When you
press play again, the book will continue playing where
you last stopped.
If the cartridge contains more than one book, then
pressing and holding the play-stop button for two
seconds will enter the book shelf. From the book shelf
you may select from the books available using the
rewind and fast forward buttons. To exit the book
shelf and play the book, press the play-stop button
again.
When you have explored all the buttons and are
ready to play a book, insert a cartridge into the slot
located in the front centre of the player. Insert the end
of the cartridge opposite the finger hole first. Push
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 54 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
firmly to lock into place. There is a retractable handle
that may be used to transport the player. You may
store the power cord in the space at the back of the
player when battery powered or when the player is
not in use”].
Super. So it gives us a lot of information about simply
playing and putting a cartridge in, to accessing the
book shelf, so that you can have more than one book
on here. And it also gave us information about how to
carry it and that you have a place to put the plug, to
wrap the cord up in there. So it gave us a lot of great
information just on that one button there.
So what we are going to do, I’m going to go ahead
and push the cartridge in and I’m holding it by the little
ring on the end that it said, and I’m going to push it
into the front of the cartridge and we’ll make sure it’s
firmly in place [NLS player audio reads “Three books.
The Hunger Games book one by Suzanne Collins. DB
68384”]. Okay and I’ll pause that. It automatically
started playing ‘The Hunger Games’. It usually plays
the first one that is in line so that’s super. We got
three books on there, so our process worked today.
I’m going to go ahead and access the book shelf by
holding down the ‘Play’ button like the instructions
gave us earlier. So I’ll hold down the ‘Play’ button until
I hear it take us into the books shelf [NLS player audio
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 55 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
reads “Book shelf... Three books… Book one… The
Hunger Games book one.”] Alright, so we are on ‘The
Hunger Games’. If I use my ‘Fast forward’ and
‘Rewind’ button I can go between the different books
that are on our book shelf.
I’m sitting on the first one so there is no need for me
to rewind. I’ll go forward by using the ‘Fast forward’
button. So I’ll just tap it [NLS player audio reads
“Two... National Geographic Kids Cricket… May
2012”]. Great, so there’s National Geographic Cricket.
Then we’ll use the ‘Fast forward to go to the next
book [NLS player audio reads “Three... Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone”]. Alright, so ‘Harry Potter’ is
on here. So I have three books and probably room – I
have another cartridge that has eight books on it so –
you can put a lot of books on here.
Another great thing about this device is it also is
capable of playing content from Learning Ally, which
was formally RFB&D. So if you are a user of the
Learning Ally books, they will also play on this. So this
is a great free device that you get from NLS which is
capable of playing not only the leisure content that
NLS has but also text book content that you can get
from Learning Ally. So this player is a great player.
And again, you would have to get a key to make it
possible to get that content and maybe we’ll talk
about that in just a minute if we have time.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 56 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
I’m going to go back to the National Geographic Kids
Cricket magazine that we have. And I’m going to
press the ‘Play’ to select this one and we’re going to
enter this magazine. I’m going to show you how to
move by articles on this [NLS player audio reads
“National Geographic Kids Cricket, May 2012…
Approximate reading time three hours… This
recording contains markers allowing direct access to
the magazine at level one, to the content and articles
at level two, to the sections at level three, and to the
sub-sections at level four”]. Okay, so I’ve paused it.
This is actually the advanced player. NLS provides us
with two players. One is the standard player and one
is the advanced player. The wonderful thing about the
advanced player is it does give us the ability to
navigate by sections, by articles and by headings or
by chapters if you’re in a chapter book. The standard
player is going to force you to try to rewind through
those so that’s the difference between the advanced
and the standard player.
So if you do have the standard player and want to
have the capability of navigating by heading or by
chapter or by article, you’re going to want to probably
get in touch with your local library and tell them that
you’d like to swap that player out. And there are
enough players to do that now. Initially they didn’t
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 57 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
have enough players but now there is no waiting list
so they should have a player to be able to swap that
out if you want to do that. Some people prefer the
standard player, but I like the ability to be able to
navigate by articles.
Above the play button is a crescent-shaped moon and
that’s your sleep timer. Then there is a bar on the
advanced player that goes across. Directly above the
moon is a button that, if you press, it toggles you
between the different ways that you can navigate. So
I’ll tap that [NLS player audio reads “Article jump”];
alright, so you can jump by article. Tap it again [NLS
player audio reads “Section jump”]; you can jump by
section. I’ll continue to tap that [NLS player audio
reads “Sub-section jump… Phrase jump… Bookmark
jump…Front matter jump…Article jump”].
It did mention bookmark in there. There is a bookmark
button, so if you’re listening, especially if you liked an
article and you wanted to come back to it later, you
could press the ‘Bookmark’ button and then navigate
by bookmarks later on. Or if you had like a cookbook
or something like that, wanted to mark certain recipes,
you could always use the ‘Bookmark’ button to do that
and it’s going to remember any time you stick that
cartridge back in, with that bookmark, where your
bookmarks are.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 58 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
So I’m moving by article now. Just to the left and the
right of that button that lets you select how you
navigate, there is a left and right button so you can
move forward by article. It’s probably going to take us
to the front matter first, so we’ll try that. I’ll keep
tapping the ‘Forward’ button here [NLS player audio
reads “National Geographic Kids, May
2012….Copyright 2012, National Geographic
Society…”]. It’s probably going to take us to contents
[NLS player audio reads “Table of Contents…”], and
then after that we’ll start moving by articles [NLS
player audio reads “Weird but true….Astonishing
stories from the files of Guinness World Records…”].
That sounds like an article that was written for me. So
I’ll press play on that to get it playing [NLS player
audio reads “Astonishing stories from the files of
Guinness World Records… Reading time two
minutes…”]. Okay, two minutes [NLS player audio
reads “Super strong fingers… How long can you do a
handstand? How about a finger stand? Wing Wei of
China holds the record for the longest…”]. Okay, to
get to listen to the rest of that article you’re going to
have to download that one and I’m sure they’ll see a
huge download on that and wonder why. But you can
still move from there to the next article. “[NLS player
audio reads “All about you… Cool inventions….”].
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 59 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Okay, so see how easy it is to move from one article
to the next? And you can do that with all of the NLS
magazines. So if you had anything from American
Heritage to Bon Apétit, you can always jump from
article to article in any of their magazines. If I wanted
to do that same thing within a book I could go back to
my bookshelf, and I’ll do that by pressing and holding
the ‘Play’ button [NLS player audio reads “Book
shelf… Three books… Book two…National
Geographic Kids Cricket, May 2012”].
Okay, I’ll go forward to my Harry Potter book [NLS
player audio reads “Book three… Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone”], and I’m going to have it play that
by pressing the ‘Play’ button [NLS player audio reads
“Four seven two six zero… Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling…”]. I’ll pause that
and let’s see the different ways that it’s marked up.
I’ll tap that navigation button up here [NLS player
audio reads “Front matter jump… Phrase jump…
Bookmarks jump…Front matter jump…”]. Okay, so I
think phrase is probably going to be like chapters so
we’ll check that out. I’ll press the front arrow [NLS
player audio reads “Text copyright 1997 by J.K.
Rowling… Read by Eric Sandfold…”]. I’ll press it
again [NLS player audio reads “Library of Congress
annotation…”]. Press it again [NLS player audio reads
“Harry’s room is a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 60 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Harry hasn’t had a birthday party in eleven years…”].
Okay, so you get a bit of an idea of how easy it is to
start navigating through different sections of a book.
Alright, so we have taken it all the way from digging
through the website to find the content, to
downloading the content, to extracting the content, to
transferring the content, and then actually pushing it
into the player and learning how to move through the
content a little bit. So hopefully this seminar has
helped. Again, it is going to be archived so if you have
any questions or any problems with any of the
different things like the extraction or whatever, you
can always go back, download that and check it out
later on. So what I am going to do is open it up for a
minute for questions.
Clarence Robinson
This is Clarence Robinson and I have a question on
downloading to a thumb drive. You were saying it’s
best to download to a folder first but my problem is my
thumb drive is not reading anything unless I plug it
into the BARD player. I was just wondering if there is
an executable file as well as the download to enable
that to read, or it doesn’t need that? I would
appreciate it if you could answer for me. Thank you.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 61 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Douglas Walker
Okay, I mentioned it a little bit earlier. It might be that
you have a U3 Smart Drive if it’s coming up with an
error code. You might want to either call or talk to
your local library. They do have a list of thumb drives
that seem to be the most compatible. Like I said
earlier, the Kingston thumb drives seem to be very
compatible with the NLS player. It’s not necessary to
have any kind of file to help it run. It should simply
play as soon as you plug it into the side of your
player.
Just remember it is something that is going to be
sticking out the side. I know that NLS has some kind
of adapter that you can get from NLS for free that
plugs into that player that sort of guides your thumb
drive down beside your player so it doesn’t stick
straight out. But still, you have something sticking
straight out the side of your player. If you have a
thumb drive, it should work as soon as you plug it in
there. Again, check to make sure before you go buy
one, and check with either the BARDtalk website or
NLS, your local library, to make sure that you get one
that is compatible.
Doug moderator
Douglas, it’s Doug, our moderator for today. There is
a question in the text chat. The question is: Is it
necessary to eject the thumb drive or the cartridge
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 62 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
before pulling it out of the computer instead of just
taking it out?
Caller
I have a question about a large book. I have a thumb
drive that works on all my downloads but – and it’s a
sixteen gigabyte – and I downloaded the Bible, and
when I extract it, the extraction stopped and said
insert the next diskette.
Douglas Walker
Okay, so the Bible is going to be a huge file so you
might be filling up that disk drive, especially if you
have other content on there. So yeah, you’re probably
going to be filling up that drive so you might want to
get a larger thumb drive, especially if you are having
issues with something as large as the Bible.
And also, on the ‘Safely remove hardware’ button –
I’ve had this come up before – supposedly the XP and
later you can just pull the thumb drive out of your
computer. They still have the ‘Safely remove’ feature
on there, however, you don’t necessarily have to use
that. They left it in the operating system. It should be
safe after XP, so anything Windows 95 or before that
– which, if you’re running that, it may be difficult to
download any content at all but – anything XP or past
XP you should just be able to pull it right out and it
shouldn’t damage your drive or your removable drive.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 63 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Caller
Thank you. That was a question that I had also. And
thank you for your presentation. It’s very helpful. Your
speech program said periodically throughout the
presentation, “Hit the space bar to activate,” and
when I’ve used BARD I’ve never heard that. Should I
just hit ‘Enter’ at those times? But that was helpful to
hear that. I’ve not heard that the four or five times I’ve
tried to use the system.
Douglas Walker
Again, I left my JAWS settings so that it would read
absolutely everything because I wanted new users to
get all of that information. I guess it comes from my
elementary ed. teaching background. I want the users
to hear that there is – you could hit ‘Enter’ on that but
– hitting the ‘Space’ bar is going to activate any of
those buttons as well. So yeah, it’s good that JAWS
reads things like that and you probably could set any
screen reader that you are using to read those
different things. But I like to have it where it will read
everything to give us as much information as
possible.
Doug Anzlovar
Are there any other questions for Douglas as we
come to the end of our seminar today?
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 64 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
Caller
Doug, I’m sorry, but I’m still not clear on if you make a
special folder how do you tell the BARD download to
go there? Did you say that you have to visit that
folder, or open it or something, before hand so that
the computer knows, or the program knows, that
that’s what you want to do?
Douglas Walker
So if you’re using XP or even if you’re using Windows
7, you can create folders anywhere you want on the
hard drive and even within My Documents, you could
create an e-books folder. And then once you’re in the
‘Save as’ dialog box, you could ‘Shift-tab’ or ‘Tab’ until
you find the tree-view to go locate that folder. Open
up My Documents, and then tab over to point to the
documents folder, open that up, open up your ebooks folder there, and then you should be able to
download right into that.
So for me, Windows 7, since it automatically just
sends it to My Downloads folder, I’m going to access
that pretty fast and then I’m going to extract it and
delete the book. I’m not one to save a lot of books on
my computer so once it’s on my cartridge I generally
delete the books that I’ve downloaded anyway, so it’s
not going to get mixed up with a bunch of stuff. But if
you’re using XP, it will point back to the last place that
you visited so if you’ve created an e-book folder it
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 65 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
should point back to there and it should download it to
that e-books folder.
Caller
Douglas, wonderful presentation. I have something
really quickly… is there a way of knowing or finding
out how many gigabytes or megabytes, whatever,
your book is in case you are putting multiple books on
a removable device, so you have some idea? Is there
some way of knowing that the average ten hour book
takes up x number of…?
Douglas Walker
You can always plug in a removable drive and check
to see how much space is left on it. If you wanted to,
you could navigate to the properties and see how
much space is used and how much space is free on
that. But it will tell you how many megabytes, like I
think it said 92 MB when we were downloading ‘The
Hunger Games’, around 90 something megabytes.
Most books that are around nine to twelve hours are
going to take right around 100 megabytes, so you can
just add that up.
Like I said, I have eight books on another cartridge
right now, and they’re full length, they’re fourteen hour
books, so you can fit quite a bit of material on one
cartridge. It’s also very exciting if you do use your
Learning Ally books on here – and that might be a
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 66 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
seminar for the future – they’re going to be much
larger. So you might have a cartridge for your text
books and then a cartridge for your leisure books.
Most text books will be around 400 megabytes so you
can probably get around five or six of those on a
good-sized cartridge.
I think that NLS has two cartridges. One is a one gig
cartridge and one is a two gig cartridge and the two
gig cartridge was only twelve dollars so I splurged and
got the larger cartridge there. And I haven’t had any
issues with running out of space.
Caller
Why did the library give us the option at that earlier
point of ‘Open’ or ‘Save’? I know I had made that
mistake early on myself and certainly wondered which
of those to pick. What’s the reason for having that
‘Open’ option there?
Douglas Walker
Well, the ‘Open’ option is just a typical – that’s a
Windows thing, that’s not anything that the library did
– that’s your standard. That’s a dialog box that is
going to pop up anytime you try to download a file.
And there are certain files that are not NLS files that
are going to want you to open the file so that
programs can launch that on your computer.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 67 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
However, the NLS stuff, you’re going to need to save
that to your computer and then go through that
extraction process. So that’s not an NLS dialog box,
that’s just your standard Windows dialog box that
pops up when you try to download something. So
that’s why that’s there.
One last question maybe?
Caller
I have a question again about that ‘Open’ and ‘Save’
thing. I actually do it that way. I open it, it seems to go
to a temp file, I highlight ‘Select all’ and I copy and
paste it to my device. What is the problem with doing
that? I don’t quite understand that piece of it.
Douglas Walker
Well, it doesn’t always work that way. As a matter of
fact you can lose files if you open them outside of a
folder like that. So really the appropriate way or the
proper way or the correct way is to go over to that
‘Save’ button and to save it so it’s extracted properly
so the files will play. If it’s been working for you and
it’s the easiest way for you, go for it. But if you really
want to do it in a way to ensure that you are not going
to lose any files and that they can be extracted
properly, you really should go to ‘Save’. Save it to
your computer and then go through that extraction
process.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 68 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
I hope that I’ve been able to answer your questions
today. I’ve really, really enjoyed today. I hope that all
this Downloading Done Easy works for you. I think
that’s about it for our time.
Doug Anzlovar
Douglas, thank you for your presentation today on
NLS/BARD: Downloading Done Easy. And thanks to
all of our participants today for joining us. This
seminar, like all of our Seminars@Hadley will be
archived on the website. They are available in archive
24/7. This seminar will also be available as a podcast
download.
Hadley’s website address is www.hadley.edu. You
can go to the ‘Past Seminars’ link on the website and
it will take you to our archive section. We also have a
variety of technology courses here available through
Hadley. We have an Internet Beyond the Basics
course, and Internet Basics. We have a Your
Technology Tool Kit course. We have three screen
reader courses that will help you improve your
listening and speed and accuracy using a screen
reader.
And we also are introducing this week a new
Powerpoint course that is available to advanced
screen reader users. The course teaches you how to
compile a Powerpoint presentation. It does not teach
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 69 of 70
2012-06-06-NLSBARD2
you, however, how to use your respective screen
reader so that’s why we say that you need to be a
pretty experienced screen reader user. So to get a list
or to review a list of all of our technology courses you
can visit our website.
Again, thank you for participating today. We do value
your feedback. Please let us know what you thought
of this seminar and to suggest future seminar topics
by sending an email to feedback@hadley.edu. And,
thanks again for your participation.
©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 70 of 70
Download