BELLINGHAM, WA /Send2Press Newswire/ — The BookCrafter ™ Publishing Suite, from Colligo Corporation, could well be a technological innovation as significant as the printing press itself. A complete turnkey solution, BookCrafter enables users to convert printed books to accessible digital books as fast as pages can be fed through the system’s included scanner. The Accessible Books read themselves out loud, become large type books, books in Braille, Audio Books, DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) format and more.
For libraries, schools and institutions serving the needs of the disabled, or for organizations and academia seeking more effective and more cost-effective ways to disseminate content in its entirety, it is a quantum leap beyond existing methods. “The greatest university is a collection of books. BookCrafter opens these books to millions who cannot read due to vision and print disabilities,” says Doug Powles, Colligo Corp.
A totally new approach
Synthesized text-to-speech is nothing new. BookCrafter goes beyond present technologies while costing far less. Not only does it slash book production costs to pennies a page, but the system retains and converts everything on a printed page into an exact rendition of the original–pictures, colors, graphs, reversed type and more. Graphically intensive magazines, picture books, text columns, worksheets, drawings, handwritten and illuminated manuscripts or elaborate manuals are converted as readily as a black and white article like this one you are now reading.
For all of its prolific capabilities, BookCrafter is remarkably easy to use, whether converting a single page or a whole library to a searchable, indexed digital format that complies with many accessibility rights and accessible text book laws. Push a single button and the BookCrafter’s scanner and software automatically scan and convert both sides of a page, up to hundreds an hour. It takes little time or training and users can be producing their first Books in just hours.
Students and end users find it just as easy and don’t have to adopt new assistive technologies. Print-disabled users can use the widely-distributed Adobe Reader(R) to access audio and large type formats. Now in the hands of over 800 million users around the world, the free program and available plug-ins enable a host of text, graphic, and multimedia handling capabilities. Colligo’s ReadText(tm) with AT&T Natural Voices(R) is included in the Suite.
Poet Ezra Pound called a book “a ball of light in one’s hand.” With BookCrafter, teachers, librarians, special educators and instructors now can bring light to the mind and imagination with a scale and speed never equaled before–even to those who must otherwise live in darkness.
More information: www.colligo.us
News issued by: Colligo Corporation
# # #
Original Story ID: (101) :: 2005-02-0215-002
Original Keywords: Colligo, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, Adaptive Technology, AssistiveTechnology,Books On-line, Cataracts, Cone rod dystrophy, Daisy Reader, Digital Talking Books, Dyslexia, E-Books Colligo Corporation
News Source: Colligo Corporation