STATE LIBRARIANS WANT NLS BOOKS ON SMARTPHONES (Bookshare has it)


I have four clients who are NLS users, but they cannot use the players provided by the library; neither can they use the small, sleek and expensive portable players which NLS does allow for use with their books. These people have physical limitations which make it impossible to use the players. They can, however use an iPad, computer, or other tablet to play digital books downloaded from the public library, Amazon or Barns and Noble. The NLS does not allow people to use a computer, smart phone or tablet to play the digital audio books.
Who can fix this problem? We can!! Don’t wait, Call and write to

The following is from an an Organ.gov page: At their fall meeting (2010) in Kansas City, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), made up of state librarians from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, passed a resolution calling upon the National Library Services (NLS) to make its new digital talking books readable on the iPhone and other smartphones.
  The resolution was in response to a letter that quoted the director of NLS as being reluctant to move in this direction.  The director indicated that he believed that blind iPhone users are a tiny minority of blind readers and he cited concerns about the security of Apple devices that might compromise NLS’s digital rights management software.
  COSLA is aware that every other major country now makes it possible for blind smartphone users to read talking books. The Association for the Blind of Western Australia (ABWA) has created an iPhone app that will read digital talking books from Australia and other countries.  The COSLA resolution calls on NLS to work with Apple and with ABWA so that blind iPhone users in the U.S. can use the new app, and that NLS cooperate with other manufacturers of smartphones to allow NLS books to be read on their devices as apps become available.
  State librarians understand that smartphones are becoming very popular with blind people because they include features that make them usable by the blind right out of the box.  The same is true of devises like the iPad and iPod Touch.  At a recent National Federation of the Blind conference in Kansas, the Kansas State Librarian reported that about a third of the attendees were iPhone users.



call your State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, too. Tell Ms. Scovill that since other countries have a way to make these audio books available on smartphones and other devices, the NLS surly can find a way. Maybe they can ask Australia or Argentina or one of the other countries who have moved their citizens who are print disabled into the modern world.
Ruth Scovill, the acting director of NLS; appointed March, 2011