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.
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 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.
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“Alt-Tab… 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 ‘Ctrl-home’ [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. 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 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 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 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 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-star-star-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 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 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 name in there. So if you were looking for a Stephen King book you could type his name in here. In saying thatlet 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 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-E-F-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 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.