This gallery of accessible etexts and ebooks builds on previous web pages I have composed on the same subject, namely those pages located here
and here.

This current page also seeks to serve as an introduction to the many formats and sources which people with disabilities can access in order to locate the reading materials they need.

Specialized formats

These books require specially-modified devices which are distributed by agencies or purchased from independent living aids companies such as Independent Living Aids Com.

National Library Service (NLS)
Web Braille .brf format
1. Even if you are already subscribed with NLS, you will need to get a username and password from your local branch library in order to download web braille files on the NLS web site.
2. this format can be read not only on braille display devices such as a BrailleNote, but can also be read by software programs with braille converters, such as Duxbury, Kurzweil 1000, version 7 and after and Open Book (uncertain of version number). It can also be downloaded to an read on braille-aware devices such as the Book Port (refer to further down this file).
3. The easiest way to save files to your computer is to go to the link of the file you wish to download and press the application key. This will bring up the context menu. Choose the "save as" option, and then use tab to select the directory where you wish to store your web braille files. You can also rename the file something easy for you to remember by typing over the default file name, which is usually a string of numbers.
4. In order to read the web braille files from the NLS web site on your computer, you will need to "associate" the .brf format with a program such as Kurzweil or Open Book.

There are two ways to search the NLS online catalog, "Quick search" and "Voyager search." Most users find the quick search easier to use.
On the Quick search page, you can search by author, title, keyword, format, and library. If you want to search only for web braille books, you can enter the phrase "web braille" (without the quotes) in the key word field, otherwise the format option will allow you to select "cassette" or "braille" (the braille option will give you results in both paper braille and web braille).
Hints for searching:
Before you begin your search, use control plus home to make sure you are reading all the search options on the page.
If you are not making use of this keyboard command yet, you should learn to use the Jaws find command control plus f which will let you search on the screen for a particular word or search string. For example, you can quickly search the online catalog by doing the following:
1. Go to the NLS web page http://www.loc.gov/nls/
2. Press control plus home to make sure you are at the top of the page.
3. Press control plus f and enter the string "cat" (without the quotes) for the word "catalog" and click on the link you are taken to.
4. Press control plus home to make certain you are at the top of the search page and then press control plus f and enter the term "aut" for "author."
5. Enter the author's name, last name first, and press enter. You will be taken to the search results page.
In five easy step you went from the NLS home page to the search results page. Learning to make your searches fast and accurate will help you create better searches.

There are many ways to use the search terms on the quick search page, but my favorite is the key word search. This is a very powerful search option. There are many kinds of searches you can accomplish just by using this one search field. here are a few ideas:
genres such as "romance" or "science fiction"
historical periods such as "Victorian" or "medieval" events such as "World War I" or "civil rights movement"
hobbies or interests such as "inventing" or "knitting"

After the key word search, there are a number of other search options which allow you to make specific limitations on your search results. The more restrictions you place on the search, the fewer results you will get and the easier it will be for you to browse them all. For instance, if you are only interested in books from NLS, you can go to the library field and select "NLS only." You can also restrict the format, such as "cassettes" or "braille."

2.Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFBD)
AudioPlus ebooks (Daisy format 4 format)
Even if you are already a registered consumer with RFBD, in order to use the AudioPlus ebooks you need to activate your online RFBD account by going to the
RFBD online ordering page.
It is important to realize that not all accessible digital players play all the Daisy formats. Unless you purchase your digital player directly from RFBD, you will probably need to send your player to RFBD to have a hardware key installed. The exception is the Book Port which, though produced by American Printing House for the Blind, merely requires a software key which can be purchased from RFBD for ten dollars (read more about this below). Even some of the agencies which are distributing digital players to the blind are confused about the keys, so make certain you ask if the player you are purchasing or receiving has the key already installed or whether this is something you will have to do yourself.

Public domain etexts

Free and available in easy-to-use-formats such as text and HTML.

Project Gutenberg
Michael Hart founded this project in 1971, and it now has hundreds of contributors scanning and donating texts to the site. PG is branching off into new formats such as MP3, but it is still the best for easy-to-use formats.

Online Digital Library
Project Gutenberg is only one of the many online etext libraries. The Online Books Page seeks to offer a resource which collects and allows searching of not only Project Gutenberg but other online libraries as well. By searching at the Online Books Page, you can simultaneously search PG, Baen Books, and many other private and public etext collections. The main page allows you to search or browse by author, title, or subject.
Find out what's new today

The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library
This is the place to go for documents in American history or American literature, and many can be found with accompanying secondary material. It also includes many large projects which compare various editions of texts, such as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.

East of the Web (short stories)
Excellent place to find short stories and reading guides. On the day I checked this out, the "Story of the Day" was one of my favorites, "The Open Window" by Saki.

Sacred Texts Archive
If you love myths, folklore, or ancient stories, this is the place for you. By going to you can purchase the entire contents of the archive on CD-Rom.
Subscribers to the CD-Rom version are eligible for updates, and it will also soon be available for purchase through Amazon.com.

Children's Books Online
Easy to download and convert to braille, includes books in a number of languages.

Blackmask Online
Particularly good for ancient history, old pulp and science fiction, mysteries and ghost stories (listed under Gothic), and for early twentieth century writers such as Wodehouse

Literary Gothic
Another one of my favorite virtual libraries, this one features spooky stories and more, ranging from the simple ghost story to novels and literary criticism of horror and the gothic. All these works were written before 1950, so don't expect to find Stephen King or Anne Rice bestsellers here.

The Assayer
This site provides free ebooks--including textbooks--on all sorts of subject areas, but focuses on the technical. It's real strength is the Science Math Computing section.

University Presses

Many university presses are putting books they publish online, for free download. These may not be the college textbooks you need, but they are great resources for papers or for reading in your field.

University of California Press
Over four hundred college-level text on a wide variety of subjects; extremely useful for research.

National Academy Press
Hundreds of searchable books on all sorts of subjects including behavioral science, biology, computers and medicine. The PDF documents are accessible and printable.

Hoover Institution (national and international policy)

Etext c Collections

Le Château : le salon de la littérature française
Etexts of French works and
and Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature in a variety of languages

CELT:The online resource for Irish history, literature and politics

Medieval Sourcebook
The Avalon Project
Yale Law School digital docuents in Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government, including many early American documents.

Textbooks Placed Online By university Professors

Many university professors are making textbooks which they have written available for free online.

Archaeology : An Introduction - an online companion

Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander

Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net

New Models for Intellectual Property Licensing

Cory Doctorow.

Another science fiction author who is participating in the Creative Commons licensing is James Patrick Kelly.
This writer and columnist for Asimov's hosts his own web site and this particular page has links to audio recordings of him reading some of his own stories.

Classics Archive at MIT
MIT also hosts the Classics Archive which offers one of the most usable collections of Greek and Roman authors.

Free eBook on eLearning "701 e-Learning Tips" (PDF format)

Digital Book Index
Another vital resource, this one allows you to either search or browse by subject, and the results include many free etexts and ebooks. Its strength is its ability to search many archives which store everything from online reference books such as style guides to primary historical documents. It also lists the format of each search result so you can judge whether it is in an accessible format or not.

PDF
Many people who use screen readers find they have problems accessing PDF files. Some of us have even come to dread hearing professors say that we will have no problem accessing the course material, because it is online in PDF. There are a number of reasons why PDF can be problematical for people using screen readers. 1. PDF allows the person creating the PDF document to set a security level on the file. Many people who end up creating such documents are not very technically proficient, but have merely been given a brief interval of training in working with the software. They typically feel that setting the security setting for the document to the highest setting will afford the most protection in preventing the file from being illegally copied or edited. However, these high security settings see the screen reader as an illegal attempt to copy the file and lock it out, preventing the screen reader user from accessing the file. Sometimes the person who is creating the electronic doument is unaware of this issue, and, if you discuss the subject, is willing to either change the security setting or send you another copy with a lower security setting. 2. if the person creating the files is unwilling to make the file more accessible, there aer a number of things you can try to access the file. First, make sure you have the newest version of Adobe Reader. Accessibility features are constantly being updated and improved, and some of the newer version have tried to address the security issue for screen reader users. 3. Other workarounds include: You can send the file to be converted by email.
If you have Kurzweil 1000 or Open Book, you can use the virtual printer to send the document to your OCR program for it to be recognized. You can do this by opening the document and then pressing control plus p and selecting the virtual printer.
Supposedly, you can try using the demo version of a program like advanced password recovery pro to crack secure PDF documents.
Are measures such as these legal? According to the Librarian of Congress, blind readers are legally allowed to circumvent technological protection measures in order to access books which they have already legally acquired.

eBooks

Generally, ebooks refer to commercially sold titles, some in easy-to-use formats such as text or HTML and others in secured formats such as MS Reader or Palm Reader (now eReader)

Baen Books
(commercial because thee books are made available free online but are also sold in paper versions). This is one of the best commercial eBook sites for beginners because it offers easy-to-use formats. Science fiction and some fantasy.

Samizdat Express
One of the first commercial eBook vendors on the Internet, another great place for beginners as it offers easy-to-use formats. Samizdat also offers many ways of delivering ebooks to readers, including:
an Email service which sends a free public domain eBook once a week (to join, send an email to requesting that you be subscribed to the free eBook of the week club. books include Longfellow's translation.
"PLEASE COPY THIS DISK" refers to the 3 1/2 floppy eBooks which can be purchased for ten dollars
You can also purchase a CD with collections with many themes such as Victoriana, American literature, or French literature, are available for $29 a disk (these can be very convenient when you are taking literature courses)
"Instant Books" refers to purchasing a single book which can be emailed directly to you for $5
For a complete list of all the books Samizdat offers, go here.

Fictionwise
There is a "Free eBooks" link on every page of Fictionwise; try starting with some of the free stories or eBooks offered at Fictionwise in order to familiarize yourself with browsing, purchasing, and reading these eBooks. There are also many stories available for under a dollar.
An additional benefit of using Fictionwise is that it always links to the newest versions of such programs as Adobe Reader and MS Reader. you can easily make sure you have the latest version of these programs, plus find the most easy-to-use documentation on these programs at Fictionwise.
Fictionwise also offers magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Because these magazines are offered in an unsecured format, you can use a program such as Mini-Reader to convert the magazines to plaintext format and then load them onto a braille device, such as BrailleNote, or even a Book Port. For more on how to do this, go here.<./a>

Safari eBooks
Computer and technology eBooks. These ebooks are read through your online bookshelf, which means they must be read online, they cannot be downloaded directly to your PC or laptop. You purchase a monthly subscription to use Safari, then select and add eBooks to your personal online library. Different subscription amounts get you a library which can contain more or less eBooks. Because these books are separated by chapters, you need to move from web page to seb page to read different chapters, which some readers find frustrating. If you are someone who requires or craves access to the newest and most complete technical information, this is one of the best means of accessing it.

Renaissance eBooks
Mostly mystery and erotica with a number of detective story anthologies Mmost of these titles are also sold through Fictionwise, but if you purchase them through the Renaissance eBooks site, you can get them in easy-to-use HTML, as opposed to Fictionwise's secured formats

For more sources of erotica and romance eBooks, refer to the Blind Bookworm Accessible Erotica Page.

Unsecured format=Unencrypted formats such as Palm Reader, Adobe Reader, and PDF

These unencrypted formats can be downloaded as many times as you want from your bookshelf and can be converted to plaintext using the Mini-Reader program
Secured format=Encrypted format. You must choose a format for this eBook before you download it, and can only download it in that format. These secured formats can be tricky, as while MS Reader in the unsecured format is accessible to screen reader users, the secured MS Reader format locks out screen readers. The only secured formats on Fictionwise which are consistently accessible to screen reader users are the Adobe Reader and Palm Reader formats. The secured Adobe Reader may not, however, allow for the read-aloud function to be accessed (though this issue seems to have been solved in the latest version of Adobe Reader). Further, the secured Palm Reader format eBooks cannot be converted into text, but must be read using the Palm Reader (now called eReader) program, which is accessible. Refer to my Palm Reader tutorial.

DRM=Digital Rights Management
The reason some formats such as MS Reader are accessible in the unsecured format but inaccessible in teh secured format is because of publishers' use of DRM. The security measures used in commercial eBooks, like the security settings used in PDF, detect the screen reader's buffer as an attempt to illegally copy and/or edit the eBook, and thus lock out the screen reader.

>From Anna Dresner's book, Finding Accessible eBooks On the Internet (National Braille Press):

DRM schemes make it difficult, if not impossible, for a screen reader to access the book text. This is not an insurmountable problem, as demonstrated by the easy accessibility of Palm documents and the fact that the most recent versions of JAWS and Window-Eyes can read some secure PDF eBooks...Nevertheless, considerable work is often necessary to make a secure format accessible.

A more difficult challenge is that many publishers are concerned that having their books read aloud by a screen reader or a text-to-speech program violates the rights of whoever owns the audio rights to the book. This belief has encouraged Microsoft not to increase the read-aloud capabilities of MS Reader and has discouraged others from making their books accessible to screen readers. Most blind readers don't consider listening to a book read by a synthesized voice to be comparable to listening to a book read by a human being, but the belief that they are equivalent is apparently quite strong among publishers and will be difficult to dispel.

Projects to Make eBooks Accessible to Blind Readers

Overdrive, Inc. and the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center and TAP Information Services are working with blind volunteers to learn what blind people want in an accessible eBook by offering secure but accessible PDF and Adobe eBooks for testing.
The Mid-Illinois Talking Books Center also sponsors online chats with various people involved in making books available to disabled readers called The Online eBookworm Program. For information about this online program, contact either Tom Peters or Lori Bell.

Another project is that of WGBH Geoff Freed, Project Manager of the Beyond the Text Project at the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM). These are the same folks who work on Descriptive Video (DVS) and close-captioning of movies being released to movie theatres and to video.

Audible
If you are interested in learning about Audible, I would recommend Anna Dresner's book, Finding Accessible eBooks On the Internet, Secnod Edition, available through the National Braille Press in both braille and electronic formats.
Another Audible resource is the Blind Audible mailing list. You can join by

Accessible Digital Devices

Go here for a list of Daisy playback devices.
In my opinion, the best of these digital playback devices, though it is not mentioned on the Daisy page, is the Book Port.
Go here for a comparison of the Book Port and the Book Courier.
The Book Port can play txt, MS Word, rtf, brf, and mp3 formats, along with the Audible audiobook files. Also, if you purchase the software key from RFBD for ten dollars, you can play RFBD AudioPlus eBooks on the Book Port. It is also extremely robust, and is easy to learn.
Go here for a Book Port Quick Guide
or here to read the online manual.

If you are interested in other devices which can play RFB&D books, go to RFBD players and accessories page.

Further resources: Finding Accessible eBooks On the Internet, Second Edition by Anna Dresner sold in braille and electronic formats at National Braille Press.
The Blind Bookworm.Org
The web site I maintain.
ElectroBooks Mailing List
The mailing list I run for blind readers using new technology. Click here to subscribe.