Bookshare Product Ideas
Welcome to the Bookshare Product Ideas Forum! This is a new area for you to suggest your ideas for Bookshare to consider as part of the product roadmap and vote on ideas that others have already submitted! We are excited to hear your thoughts!
If you are looking for Technical Support or have questions about Bookshare, please use the Contact Us form on http://www.bookshare.org/contactUs.
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108 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
We get very little grade level information currently and what we do get varies by source. In our work to improve our metadata, we will look at grade level data and see how much we can improve it!
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84 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
Please add more specifics on your issues so we can better address the problems!
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Make less mistakes in books that are BRF file
Bookshare does have a great selection of books but does not look carefully evough at the mistakes made in the braille format of the books. Mistakes include mispelling and misuse of contractions. Not being able to tell what some words are and other things.
77 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
We spent a good bit of time to improve overall Braille quality last year, but we’re always listening for where we can continue to make systematic improvements. If you want to give specific examples feel free to do so here, or putting the information in the Contact Us form for “Technical Support” http://www.bookshare.org/contactUs. Also please do use the “Report Book Quality Issue” link in the right column of any title detail page and we will reprocess that book.
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72 votesstarted ·
Lara Long
responded
We are working on a Firefox add-on called AnyDaisy that will allow you to read Bookshare books in your browser.
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Make books downloadable in ePub format.
Making books available in ePub formate would make syncing with eReaders much quicker and better.
63 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
At this point we don’t provide ePub as it violates the Chafee amendment requiring that books be “distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.” That said we are looking at ways to serve a broader community of users that need alternative formats.
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Make illustrations viewable.
In many childen's books, illustrations are extremely important to the story. The books don't make sense unless you see the pictures.
59 votesstarted ·
Lara Long
responded
We actually do provide images in our books, but only in those that the source provider supplies them. So today we get those primarily from NIMAC books, but also oftentimes from publisher books. Scanned books today do not maintain the images though we are evaluating the ability to do so.
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Make Bookshare books available to play in mp3 players
We receive many requests to read Bookshare books on commercial mp3 players and are going to be working on a solution to provide something along these lines very soon. You're comments are greatly welcome!
57 votesplanned ·
Lara Long
responded
We will be delivering books to mp3 devices in the near future
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I choose computer, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Kindle and other readers!
By having lots of platforms to chose from, and something like Kindle's whispersync so we can change devices and be in the same place. And to have bookmarks and notes available everywhere would be a dream come true! It's so frustrating having tools that almost work well in the classroom, at home, outside, in the car......sigh.
51 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
1. Any device provider that has internet capabilities can build access to Bookshare.
2. Storing reading tools settings in the “cloud” for you to have access to regardless of device is a feature we’re evaluating. -
47 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
We are in contact with the Blio team and as soon as they launch we will work to see if they are able to support the DAISY 3 standard to read books.
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Make Bookshare/Read-out-loud available on Android tablets
Make Bookshare and Read-out-loud available on Android tablets. This would facilitate students using these applications at home and school.
45 votesstarted ·
Lara Long
responded
I’d like to split this idea out into two separate ones or just call it having an Android DAISY reader. Read:OutLoud is a product by Don Johnston, and likely best to report feedback to them on new OS platforms. We are working on an Android DAISY reader that will be free and open-source and in beta in fall of 2011. If you’re interested to participate please add comments, also knowing your device will help us for testing purposes.
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connect bookshare with other book sites like Project Gutenberg and Open Library
Add to Bookshare's library with the help of accessible on-line project's like Project Gutenberg and the Open Library.
41 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
This is something we are very keen to make happen, our first step is that our collection is available via a public API that anyone can use on their own site. We also need to work with other to develop a common way to share information and that’s what we’re evaluating! Keep adding collections you use most frequently to help us prioritize!
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34 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
Specific magazines would be helpful to know if you can add comments here. Just a note: we currently get all of our periodicals and magazines through NFB-Newsline. It’s also a good idea to file any sort of book/collection request in http://www.bookshare.org/contactUs
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30 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
Any device that supports “accessible” book formats (DAISY) can read Bookshare books. If a partner is open to working with us to support this format on their device we have an excellent, standard API to make the integration extremely simple! This is a device we have been working to partner with if it helps – but we encourage you to reach out to them directly as well!
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Create One-Stop Search Tool for Volunteers
When deciding whether or not to scan a book volunteers should be able to key in the title, author name and do One search to pull up info on whether it is in the collection, on the books being scanned list, on the checkout list, in process, with one of our outsourcers, or being handled by a publishing partner. Lack of this tool is resulting in duplicated efforts.
28 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
This is under review for work. I will work with the volunteer team and through VAT to make sure we get it right!
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Include visuals in textbooks including graphs, maps and pictures.
Some visuals are importent to the meaning of the text.
28 votesstarted ·
Lara Long
responded
We actually do provide images where the source provider gives them to us – for example all of our NIMAC books have images. We are working on improving the descriptions of those images for those that cannot see them readily.
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26 votesplanned ·
Lara Long
responded
Absolutely agree! We want to provide it by recent and by categories, and would love to hear other ideas about how you’d like your feeds parsed.
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Allow digital signatures on Proof of Disability (POD)
From NFB member party via Allison Hilliker
The ability to digitally/electronically sign our proof of disability form.
This suggestion came from an AT trainer. Folks with print disabilities can't access our print form and therefore can't sign up their students/clients independently.26 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
We are considering this possibility, there are some legal challenges we’ll have to review.
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15 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
We are investigating the incorporation of MARC and library subject headings into the library.
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Create software that will combine the text from Bookshare with the audio from Learning Ally
I prefer the natural voices of Learning Ally, and like to follow along in books as I listen to them. it would be great to have a software program or portable device that will allow me to listen to the audio of a book from Learning Ally with the text from bookshare.
15 votes -
Allow filtering of childrens' titles
(NFB members party via Allison Hilliker)
Ability to set individual account preferences to filter out the children's books on the New Books page14 votesunder review ·
Lara Long
responded
This was echoed at the NFB meeting as well particularly with all the new books going in – we will likely make some improvements here in the near-term