eClipseReader EyeNet is an excellent downloading, conversion, and reading tool specifically devised for blind and visually impaired persons who wish to read books in the DAISY format using their computer.
For those not too familiar with the DAISY standard, suffice it to say that it has been described as “the best way to read and to publish”. This NISO standard is used worldwide mainly by institutions serving blind and visually impaired persons to create books that are fully accessible and navigable. These books can contain electronic text, audio, or a combination of both, and are marked-up using XML and SMIL in a way that allows anyone to move around the book just like a sighted reader does when reading a printed book. This is what eClipseReader does – this DAISY book reader allows you to navigate through the different headings in the book, the page numbers, or any other bookmark existing in it. You can create your own bookmarks, and move to your favorite passages in a clean and fast way. When both audio and text are present, these are fully synchronized, and eClipseReader will reproduce the audio while showing you the exact section of the text that is being read aloud. When no audio is present, the text will still be read out to you using any synthetic voice installed in your system.
The reader will load and read any DAISY book stored in your system or on a CD. You can create your own “library” and add as many books as wished to it – eClipseReader will remember where you left off reading as well as all the bookmarks and annotations made in each book. You can also add to your library all books downloaded using the EyeNet part of this product. This is nothing but an accessible Web browser that will allow you to search and download a wide variety of files. If these files are already in the DAISY format, the reader will load it and will start reading it right away. When you download a DTB-DNA or DTB-RDNA file (produced using eClipseWriter Pro), then the program will download and “convert” these files into proper DAISY books that you can navigate and enjoy. Remember that you can use eClipseReader EyeNet as a “print disabled friendly” alternative to less accessible Web browsers.
Both the reader and the web browser interfaces are self-voicing, meaning that all the actions you perform in any of them or any information appearing in the interface will be read out loud to you.
Pros
- Fully accessible self-voicing interface
- Full support for bookmarks and favorites
- Opens a large variety of text-based files
- Comes with eClipseWater for easy document conversion
Cons
- None