[Athen] RoboBraille

[Robert Espero]

RoboBraille/Sensus Access has been an incredible resource for my campus.
We've got a handful of Ph.D. students who are in need of literally hundreds
of texts/resources (physical, multiple digital formats that include PDF,
JPG, etc.). Simply due to the limitations of our office hours and
availability we have been training our students on how to use
RoboBraille/Sensus Access. They upload their own files and receive them back
in their preferred output format (MP3 audio, Braille, e-Book, or
DOC/TXT/RTF/Tagged PDF) via email or FTP. It has saved a significant amount
of work for my AltMedia Specialist AND most importantly is available 24
hours, 7 days a week. For smaller uploaded files of up to 50 pages has taken
less than 10 minutes to receive the accessible format back. For entire books
(300-400) it has taken approximately 2-6 hours in my experience (broken down
into chapters). 

 

My office has made RoboBraille/SensusAccess available via our homepage but
can be accessed directly at:

 

http://www.dsc.uci.edu/conversion/convert.php

 

The only requirement is that the users have a @uci.edu domain on their
email. In this, the campus Libraries and academic departments have been able
to utilize this resource in the event they have other clientele, students,
faculty and/or staff that require accessible media. 

 

If you have any additional questions please feel free to email me back or
call me at 949-824-9205.

 

Kind Regards,

Robert Espero

AT/IT Manager

Disability Services Center

UC Irvine

 

From: athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of James
Bailey
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 9:56 AM
To: athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu;
athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Athen] RoboBraille

 

 

 

Hello all:

I think the RoboBraille service is great and I tell our Alt-format users
about it. I particularly recommend it for those study sessions when a
picture-only PDF comes off of BlackBoard etc. and a the student needs it
converted quickly to keep working.

I have received an e-mail or two from them suggesting we (U Oregon) need an
agreement with them. We do not use it at all in our production process. I
simply make students aware of it and the students then use it or not as
individuals.

 

This is from their web site (it's cut and paste so any typos are theirs): 

"RoboBraille is available 24/7 as a self-service solution, it is free of
charge to all individual, non-commercial users and users need not register
in order to use the service. The objective is to support and promote
self-sufficiency of people with special needs socially, throughout the
educational system and on the labour market. As an additional benefit,
RoboBraille helps to protect the privacy of of those who need material in
alternate formats."

This seems pretty cut and dried to me. 

If you have a take on this, please share it. 

 

Oh it gets better!

 

From: Tanja Stevns <tanja at sensus.dk>

Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 9:10 AM

To: James Bailey

Subject: SV: Document conversion

James,

The users go through our SensusAccess engine. The requests is coming from
University of Oregon. I am not talking about

personal private use of individuals using RoboBraille as you are referring
to in this mail.

Now I have tried to approach this in the best way possible but we will take
action on further ongoing use from

universities who do not wish to make an agreement with us.

Have a nice day,

Tanja

 

My take on this is that they are seeing our student e-mail accounts as being
the University of Oregon.

 

As Tanja says, "Have a nice day"

 

James

 

 

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