Written by Suzanne Feit

Imagine what it’s like when you have to wait for your teacher to read the textbook to you. Or, you have to wait for mom to finish dinner and the dishes before she has time to read the most popular books to you? What happens when it’s time for the class to review the history chapter and you can’t review it by yourself? And, what can you do when the textbook is not available in PDF and it might take days to find someone to cut the binding and scan the book for you to have access to it?

Why should you, a bright learner, be kept behind because you struggle with decoding or processing and need more time and exposure to the text? What do you do if you can’t decode a word? Do you skip the passage and pretend to understand?

One truly accessible solution is Bookshare.org

Bookshare’s mission is to ensure that all individuals with print disabilities have equal and timely access to print materials. This is a growing online library of over 280,000 titles that is FREE to students with print disabilities. Once a student has qualified for Bookshare then access through Kurzweil 3000 is a breeze. Visit the Bookshare website to learn how to qualify for a membership.

Did you know that you can open Bookshare Texts Directly into Kurzweil 3000?

You can easily download your books directly into Kurzweil 3000 software installed directly on your computer. Simply, open Kurzweil 3000, go to the Online menu and select Search for Books. Enter the author, title or ISBN number and your Bookshare user name and password. The books are downloaded and saved to your computer. You can save this file to your Universal Library and access through the web-based firefly application or through your firefly iPad App. At this time you can import directly into Kurzweil 3000 with an individual Bookshare account. Using a group account, simply download the book from Bookshare and then open it through Kurzweil 3000 and save to Universal Library in the respective student’s account.

New to the firefly Web-based Application?

The web-based application, firefly, now has a button named Open a File From Bookshare! This button allows you to search by Author or Title and the book is placed into your Recently Opened folder. After Logging into the firefly application, this file can be moved to any location by using a Right-Click and selecting Copy and then opening any folder in your Universal Library and selecting Paste.

Once the text is in Kurzweil 3000, you can save chapters, add bookmarks and take advantage of all the other wonderful Study Skills tools within the program—and access the eBook through Kurzweil 3000 software installed on your computer or by logging into the firefly application. Often districts and individual students have a Bookshare account but they think they need many other tools to access these files. Now with Kurzweil 3000, all the reading, comprehension, writing and testing tools are available in this one application.

Universal Library Really Means Easy Access

Any Bookshare file in the Universal library can be accessed from Kurzweil 3000, the firefly application, or the firefly iPad App. In addition, using Kurzweil 3000 allows you to save any file as an audio file for additional access.

Now all students can have the same opportunities to independently read, listen and access their textbooks and leisure reading books.

We invite you to learn more about Bookshare and Kurzweil 3000 by watching our recorded webinar Bookshare & Kurzweil 3000: The Dynamic Duo!

Are you ready to take it for a spin?

Sign-up for a 30-day free trial or contact us for a guided tour.