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Article doesn't mention a big audience that would be very interested in cheap book scanning: the print disabled. Blind and partially-sighted people are the most

Article doesn't mention a big audience that would be very interested in cheap book scanning: the print disabled. Blind and partially-sighted people are the most obvious members of this group but dyslexics and others who cannot read normal print would also benefit. Many books are of course already available through libraries for the blind but if you need less-popular or specialised texts you are out of luck. With an aging population it seems this is a very natural niche. Now if it were only OnePoundScan instead of OneDollarScan...

michaelbuckbee 15y ago
I think this is one of the hidden benefits of going digital with books. The selection of large print books is very weak, but with a kindle (or similar) suddenly every book is a large print book and many can be played as automated audio books as well.
kellishaver 15y ago
I came here to say the same thing. I can't read printed books at all. Even large print ones are a struggle. I just have to have the back light of my iPad or computer screen to see what I'm reading, in addition to the increased font size. I have a lot of books that I love that aren't available in digital format, mostly due to their age. I think I may well be taking advantage of this service.
icebraining 15y ago
This doesn't OCR them, it's just an image, so the blind are still out of luck.
- squirrel 15y ago
  Well, it still helps - you can OCR a book file yourself, even if you can't see; just a few clicks and then go do something more interesting. Scanning your own book is possible, but requires sitting there throughout. Edit: http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php says "OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. The PDFs will contain the OCR text layer behind the images to make the text searchable and selectable." This service is labelled free so I guess you get it (or can get it) for each scan.

michaelbuckbee 15y ago

I think this is one of the hidden benefits of going digital with books. The selection of large print books is very weak, but with a kindle (or similar) suddenly every book is a large print book and many can be played as automated audio books as well.

kellishaver 15y ago

I came here to say the same thing. I can't read printed books at all. Even large print ones are a struggle. I just have to have the back light of my iPad or computer screen to see what I'm reading, in addition to the increased font size. I have a lot of books that I love that aren't available in digital format, mostly due to their age. I think I may well be taking advantage of this service.

icebraining 15y ago

This doesn't OCR them, it's just an image, so the blind are still out of luck.

squirrel 15y ago
Well, it still helps - you can OCR a book file yourself, even if you can't see; just a few clicks and then go do something more interesting. Scanning your own book is possible, but requires sitting there throughout. Edit: http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php says "OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. The PDFs will contain the OCR text layer behind the images to make the text searchable and selectable." This service is labelled free so I guess you get it (or can get it) for each scan.