Clear as day: Newburyport library turns to technology to aid visually impaired patrons

By SONYA VARTABEDIAN

Daily News staff

Lorraine Davis knows the frustration of not being able to easily read a letter or the latest bestseller, catch up on today's news, scan a magazine, or surf the Internet. Her limited sight turns the simplest of tasks for many into a challenge.

The Amesbury woman has an enlarger at home to help her tend to personal paperwork and business. But there's plenty of other things she's restricted from by virtue of her inability to see well.

"It's bad enough you can't drive," said Davis, who leads a club for people of low vision through the Newburyport Council on Aging. "But there's something about having someone else do those things that is frustrating."

The Newburyport Public Library is hoping to ease some of those obstacles.

Through a $20,000 federal Library Services and Technology Act grant awarded through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, the library is taking a leap forward in helping blind and visually impaired people with tasks most take for granted.

Nancy Alcorn, assistant head librarian, has spent the past couple of years assessing the library's needs, honing in on its ability to properly service people with disabilities.

Working closely with Adaptive Technology Consulting, a Salisbury-based company devoted to assisting people who are blind, have low vision or are learning disabled, Alcorn ultimately focused her attention on developing ways to give people with sight impairments better access to library services.

"They should be able to do whatever anyone else can do in a library setting," she said. "This will bring in a segment of the population that we haven't been able to service well."

Last week, Alcorn invited members of Davis' club to an unveiling and demonstration of new assistive technology purchased specifically with people who have vision problems in mind.

The library is now equipped with two fully networked Gateway computers with scanners for the visually impaired and a screen magnification enlarger.

The computers feature OpenBook scanning software that quickly reads scanned text from a book, magazine or other printed document and converts it through a synthesizer to speech, allowing a person to hear what they cannot see to read themselves.

The work stations also include a software program called JAWS that can read aloud most any text it encounters -- including a Microsoft word document or e-mail a visually impaired user might compose or receive, information off the Internet, newspaper headlines and more.

The enlarger, a closed-circuit device that looks much like a television, magnifies documents and photographs to several times its original size, rendering them readable to people with limited sight.

The computers, which will be furnished with earphones, will be placed in both the reading room and technology room, while the magnifier will likely be found in the reading room.

In addition, the library's collection includes audiobooks and new descriptive and closed-caption videos geared specifically to the visually impaired and blind.

Shelley Quezada of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners sees the new additions to the Newburyport library as a step toward enabling equal access to all.

"It levels the playing field so someone who is visually impaired doesn't hear about this wonderful thing called the Internet and they are not able to use it."

She added that individuals who are not necessarily visually impaired may benefit from the equipment as well.

"A significant portion of the population in the country is aging, and failing eyesight is one of the things that happens," she said. "Even those with normal eyesight as adults have trouble as they get older.

Newburyport was one of just six libraries statewide to receive a Serving People with Disabilities grant this year from the Board of Library Commissioners.

Under the two-year grants, libraries were required to do considerable statistical and informational analysis to assure the money is being spent on uses tailored to the unique needs of the community.

Alcorn said she was fortunate to have the resources of Adaptive Technology Consulting and its owner Gayle Yarnall, who is legally blind herself, so close by in Salisbury.

Yarnall, who was born blind, has worked with many libraries and various corporations all over Massachusetts and New England since starting her business in 1994, but welcomed the opportunity to provide technology right in her own backyard.

She started her business because she knows selecting, purchasing and learning how to use an adaptive technology product or system is one of the biggest financial and emotional investments a person will make. Working with a staff of four, she personally assists individuals and major corporations with their technology choices. To date, her company has served more than 1,000 individuals who are blind, have low vision or are learning disabled.

While the technology to assist the visually impaired is not especially new, Yarnall said the systems that read text aloud have become more affordable in recent years, allowing them to be more widely introduced into a variety of areas.

"Blind people five to six years ago never thought about coming into a library," she said. "Today, with equipment like this, they're finding it worthwhile."

The completion of the library's renovation and expansion last spring removed all physical barriers into the State Street building, making the facility handicapped accessible. Now, library officials have turned their attention to the interior.

"The idea was that now that we have a facility that is fully accessible," said Alcorn, "everything in it be accessible, too."

While the first year of the two-year grant is focused primarily on adult needs, Alcorn intends to focus on younger patrons who are disabled for the second phase. But for now, she hopes to acquaint seniors and others with vision problems to the new technology and encourage them to tap into the library's services more fully.

"Ever if only a half-dozen people use it on a regular basis, it's providing an enormous service. That's what we need to be doing," Alcorn said. "We're really here for everybody. This place belongs to everybody."