Hello
Class. My name is Chuck and today I would like to speak, or in this case, type,
about a piece of special tech that I can honestly say has changed my life: the
Victor Reader Stream, made by Humanware.
It is more than an Ipod for the blind, as I have heard it
described, it can allow you to read text files, (it has a text to speech engine)
(rtf, txt, html, and with an upgrade,
pdf as well) listen to music, read library books, either web Braille or audio
books, read books using audable.com or bookshare books, and record college
lectures or short notes. I’ve even used it to record radio stations… although
that is tricky… I tried to record a church service once, it didn’t work though…
Anyway, it is simple to operate. It uses a telephone style keyboard to input
commands, and sd cards for memory. This means that it can have almost unlimited
memory depending of course on how many sd cards that you have. You may also use
the bookmark feature to mark places that you wish to return to later in any
of the files on the sd card, whether they be book or note. You may have 2000
bookmarks in the Stream before the internal database starts overwriting the
oldest bookmarks. You may also upgrade the stream via website when another
version of the stream comes out for free.
The only downside to the stream is the fact that it costs
$400 a unit and as far as books in special formats go, such as bookshare, audable, books from the library of congress, either
audio or web Braille, or books from Rfbd, (Recording For The Blind And
Dyslexic later called Learning Ally) (for those of you considering
college) special “keys” or files that enable books in specialized formats, to
be played on the Stream are needed. If you wish to obtain such keys, you have
to jump through a few hoops to do so. Once done, however, it is only a matter
of downloading the material from the chosen provider, once to the computer,
unzipping said material, and then downloading the unzipped material from the
computer to the proper folder on the sd card. That is another downside to the
Stream. If one downloads the wrong filetype to the wrong folder, the said
filetype won’t play. Other than that, the Stream is simple to operate. It comes
with a wealth of instruction in various formats including it’s own internal
user guide.
As I have said at the beginning of this article, the Stream
has changed my life. Thanks to it’s Portability, (it is about the size of a
deck of cards) it can be carried anywhere. Also, the average battery life of
the Stream on a single charge is 15 hours. The only exception is if the playing
speed is increased. As I said, the Stream has changed my life. I highly encourage
the totally blind to get one if possible. Thank you for your time and
attention.
