30+ Accessibility Tools, Softwares & Resources for The Visually Impaired

Free ebooks are meant to be read and enjoyed by everybody regardless of physical imperfections, hence why this post is being made, although I must admit that this should be the first post that should be posted here. Having said that, do join me in the journey to increase this list of resources to make it a comprehensive one, to provide and create the proper accessibility channels. I’m sure there are other list out there which covers some of the areas below, but I do hope this post will somehow be a part of the whole effort in making this a reality.

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Everything you need to know about PDF

Portable Document Format or PDF is by far the most popular format for documents these days. It’s widely used and most of us have somekind of PDF reader installed on our systems. It has been reported that Adobe PDF Reader has been downloaded by more than 300 million users. This post will cover a number of topics ranging from free tools and applications on how you can create your own PDF documents, as well as other online alternatives of similar functions. Also included are alternative PDF Readers and resources on how you can onvert your existing PDF to other formats, and a lot other information.

PDF Creators (Offline)

1. PrimoPDF (Offline & Online)
2. CutePDF
3. PDF Redirect
4. Bullzip PDF
5. PDFCreator (SourceForget.net)
6. PDFCreator (PDFForge.org)
7. DoPDF
8. FreePDFCreator (Offline & Online)
9. PDF99

I’m using CutePDF myself, and tested a couple of PDF creators quite a while back. Your selection will most likely depends on your personal taste and what kind of features that you’re looking for. If you’re searching for one and would like to based that solely on popularity or number of downloads, you can visit this site for a better picture on which on you should try out first.

PDF Creators (Online)

* If you’re trying to convert personal documents, try not to use any online pdf converters. Not that they’re not safe (and I’m sure each of them has a clear Privacy Policy) but it’s best to apply certain preventive & precautionary measures before setting your private documents out there on the net.
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Mammoth Free Ebooks

I feel that a post of this magnitude should be done once in a while to portray the greatness of ebooks in cyberspace. Not only ebooks are cheaper to produce, but most importantly, each ebook represents a few trees that you save from being cut down. This kind of post will come in once in a while, consisting of a long list of free ebooks from various categories. Instead of wrapping each ebook within a post, why not make a post to wrap around dozens of ebooks? Enough of mumbo jumbo, here you go with our first MAMMOTH FREE EBOOK updates…

1. Tones of SAP Ebooks
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
3. Free ebooks on Philippine history (History)
4. O’Reilly’s Open Ebooks (Computers & Internet)
5. The Underground Railroad: Narratives, Letters & Escapes (History)
6. Vulnerability Management for Dummies
7. Free ebooks on Creativity and Design
8. 4 Free and Great Programming Ebooks
9. Two Free eBooks From Lon Safko (Fiction & Non-Fiction)
10. Type in Berlin (Web 2.0 Typography)
11. Free eBooks, Excerpts, Stories!
12. Science fiction and fantasy books published by Dragon Moon Press
13. Free audiobooks from the public domain
14. The Burgomeister’s Books – Free ebook library
15. The Online Books Page
16. Free Online Literature with more than 2000 Classic Texts
17. Cornell University Library (524,213 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics)
18. Free eBooks for your PDA, iPhone, or eBook reader (Various topics in various formats)
19. Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyberbooks
20. The Universal Digital Library (A lot of ebooks)
21. Page by Page Books (Hundreds of classic books)
22. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu (Vampire based novella)
23. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
24. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
25. Information Overload (Information, advertising & communications)
26. The CoCreative Consumer (Consumers)
27. Short Stories & Flash Fiction
28. The Short Story (They even have competitions)
29. 17 Short Story Sites (In various formats)
30. Bookrags.com (Over 8.3 million pages of literature summaries, biographies, literary criticism, essays, encyclopedias, and eBooks)
31. ReadPrint.com – Free Online Library, Poems & Short Stories
32. Tones of Short Stories
33. ABC Radio 2007 Short Story Project (In audio formats)
34. Short Inspiring Stories (Some are just in a paragraph or two)
35. eServer.org – e-publishing co-op based at Iowa State University where hundreds of writers, editors and scholars gather to publish over 35,000 works free of charge.
36. Free Mobipocket eBooks
37. 1.5 Million Ebooks for mobile

Tools

1. 5 Free Useful PDF Tools
2. Stanza – Popular e-book reader for the iPhone

News / Articles

1. 20 Reasons Why 2009 Will Be the Year of the eBook
2. 1000 novels everyone must read

This should keep you occupied for a long time. If you’ve found any broken links or wish to provide a review on any of the links above, do leave it in the comments section. I’ll leave this post as sticky for a couple of days and see how it goes. Enjoy!

Read Books on your phone

Mobilitysite.com has a great article and list of mobile readers as well as other places to get your ebooks for free. Although a short info, but a great resource nevertheless.

An excerpt:-

All you need is a mobile reader (free), your phone, and the eBook you want to read! Have kids that need to do some summer reading? Put the eBooks on their phones!

Read the full story … 

Adobe® Digital Editions 1.0

Adobe Systems come out with a new free reader – Adobe® Digital Editions 1.0, a new software application built from the ground up for acquiring, managing and reading eBooks, digital newspapers, and other digital publications.

Available for both Windows and Mac

More information and download link below:-
Click here to download!