Access to ebooks for the motor impaired – Microsoft Reader?
It’s hard to know which is the best format to prepare electronic books for the motor impaired. The CALL Centre suggests that a very useful way is to use Microsoft Reader, to allow the user to turn the on-screen pages.
The reader software is available from here; http://www.microsoft.com/reader/downloads/default.mspx
To prepare a book, you need a utility that works in MS Word. It seems to be called “Read in Microsoft Reader”. You can download it from here; http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/downloads/rmr.mspx
You turn the pages by pressing Page up and page Down
Advantages seem to be;
- All the software is free
- You can easily set up a table of contents in MS Word. This converts to a TOC for the e-book.
- The software remembers where you left off reading. When you reload MS reader you are back in the same book at the same place.
- It has alot of keyboard shortcuts
Disadvantages seem to be;
- It does not seem to allow complete access to a keyboard user. A switch user could only access the page up and down features.
- It is for Windows only.
- There seems to be some doubt whether the book creation utility works in the latest version of MS Word.
