Guides: E-books and Audiobooks at Middlebury: Text-to-Speech and Accessibility Information

Accessibility Tools and Resources

Accessibility at the Library
CCTV magnifying viewer, Dragon software station, book retrieval, and more.
Tutoring Services (CTLR)
Free peer and professional tutoring available through the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research (CTLR) at the Davis Family Library.
SensusAccess Document Converter
Web-based tool that converts files and text to MP3, Braille, ebooks, and accessible formats. Available to the Middlebury community.

Common Screen Readers

The following screen readers are fairly widely supported by the College's e-book platforms:

Specific Platforms

EBSCO

EBSCO e-books support standard screen readers. Much more information can be found on EBSCO's eBook Accessibility User Guide and FAQs page (Middlebury login credentials required).

JSTOR

JSTOR offers the following services:

Re-tag PDFs for ease of reading
Send you accessible versions of articles that you can't read
Talk or write you through any aspect of the website that you find difficult

For more information, please see JSTOR's Accessibility: A Practical Overview webpage.

Overdrive

Overdrive states explicitly that the Overdrive website is compatible with NVDA and Jaws. Additionally, the OverDrive app for Android, iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch), and Windows 8/10 is compatible with most accessibility programs and apps (including native ones like Android Accessibility Suite, VoiceOver for iOS, and Narrator for Windows). You can use these screen readers to navigate the app, browse for content, and listen to audiobooks. Most screen readers will also read the text of an ebook, but this isn't fully supported and may not function ideally.

ProQuest

ProQuest e-books support standard screen readers. Using Adobe Digital Editions helps with screen-reader functionality, although it’s important to note that some e-books are simply PDF image scans without OCR, which of course is useless for any screen reader. Fortunately, these are not too common.

Springer

Springer provides no readily available information about the compatibility of their e-books with screen readers or accessibility tools. They do state that their website is compatible with recent versions of screen reading software, magnifier tools, operating system speech packages, and speech recognition software.