bookscanner in bay area? - sudo-discuss

1 Nov 2014

someone came to IRC asking if we had a bookscanner, because they are
visually impaired and need to read some books after scanning them.
here is what they said in IRC.  I don't know how to contact them but I
think we should prioritize making a working bookscanner, or at least a
regular scanner, at sudoroom, and putting mention of it on our website in
an easily read way.  Our site is not the best for visually impaired people
to read, so we should keep that in mind when making changes.
also i am pleased to say that the robot arm has volunteered to help with
any bookscanning efforts, if we have a scanner and book that we are
willing to sacrifice in the name of training it to be gentle.
we can easily attach vacuum and air-blowing nozzles onto its hand, and it
can wield a flatbed scanner and place it onto the pages of the books,
given sufficient software intelligence and programming.
-jake
10:10 < jacques_> Hey, I have a reading disability and am looking for
                   access to a book scanner this week and
                   interested in working with book scanner hardware
                   and software with my local hackerspaces long
                   term. The scanners at noisebride and AMT are taken
                   apart currently and the book scanning
                   service at the digital archive only converts to
                   daisy as I understand it.  I need to scan 2
                   250 page hardback books to text or PDF-text to be
                   able to do text-t[o speech conversion]
10:10 < jacques_> Do you have a book scanner or do you know where I can
                   accomplish this locally?  I am a professional AV tech
                   with lots of video, audio, arts, books and DIY
                   experience.
10:22 < yar> jacques_: i don't think we have a book scanner. if we do,
                   it's definitely not well-documented or operational.
10:31 < jacques_> Who would you ask if you were  trying to quickly find a
                   book scanner in the Bay Area?
10:32 < yar> idk, noisebridge's scanners may be taken apart but they still
                   have a "digitalarchivist" email list
                   where i've seen some activity recently
10:33 < yar> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/digitalarchivists
10:34 < yar> oh wait that most recent email is probably from you, huh? :)
10:45 < jacques_> yes...(sigh) lots of discussion for this half-blind
                   half-deaf half-wit
10:45 < jacques_> but no scanno
11:00 < jacques_> sorry for that moment of self-pity. I am unable to read
                   books except with audio and am part of
                   an important campaign I need to ead a book by the 2
                   authors for short promo
                   http://youtu.be/CsJVwxwYhag a breif promo
11:04 < jacques_> without capital-ism, we would not need to have this
                   conversation because copy-right would not
                   have technology, books and all ideas locked up
11:33 < jacques_> called 3 tech shops techshop.ws for-profit hackerspaces
                   but still cannot locate in perhaps the
                   technology center of the solarsystem the proverbila
                   bookscanner which in theory are becomming
                   avilable in all hackerspaces globally
11:33 < jacques_> diybookscanner.org
12:19 -!- jacques_ [62cff885(a)gateway/web/freenode/ip.98.207.248.133]
12:19 -!-  was      : 98.207.248.133 - http://webchat.freenode.net
12:19 -!-  server   : herbert.freenode.net [Sat Nov 1 19:16:01 2014]
12:19 -!- End of WHOWAS