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I originally intended this to be for my blog, but I figured it was better off here on Mobile Read.

If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, let me know!

A LOW-VISION GUIDE TO THE SONY PRS-505

Disclaimer: As with all other low vision strategies, your personal experience will vary. These are just my experiences, from my viewpoint as a person with low vision. A screen-based ebook reader is not the only kind of ebook reader available to those who are legally blind. If you read braille, you may prefer a notetaker with a braille display such as Humanware's BrailleNote or Freedom Scientific's PacMate. If text-to-speech is your preferred means of reading digital text, Humanware's Victor Reader Stream or Springer Design's Book Courier may be good portable solutions.

LOW-VISION ADVANTAGES OF E-INK DISPLAYS
E-ink displays differ from the CRT and LCD computer screens with which you are probably familiar. They look, as their name implies, more like real paper and ink than like a laptop computer screen. They do not emit light (the cause of the glare and eyestrain experienced by many low-vision as well as normally sighted people) and the images displayed are crisp and high-contrast, although they are greyscale rather than color.

OVERLAYS
You can use colored plastic overlays just as with paper books. Yellow overlays for post-cataract-surgery patients are the most common, but other colors are useful for some neurological conditions and learning disabilities.


MAGNIFIERS AND CCTVS
Although the fonts on most e-ink devices are adjustable, there may be circumstances in which the low vision user may wish to use additional magnification. If you've ever tried to use a magnifier on a CRT or LCD screen, you've probably noticed that it makes a pretty colored light show, but it is not particularly useful for reading. Using a magnifier on an e-ink device is the same as with real paper. CCTV magnifiers will also work with e-ink devices. An added advantage is that the screen of an e-ink device is flat, unlike a paper book which can cause distortion on the curved part of the page near the book's spine. If you're formatting your own documents, you can set the margins on the ebook so that you only have to move the document tray along the y axis and not the x axis, which will prevent most CCTV-induced motion sickness symptoms.

TACTILE CONTROL BUTTONS
The labels for the tactile control buttons on the PRS-505 are small, but there are not very many of them so the layout is easily memorized. Some of the controls are multi-function and context-sensitive. For example, the bookmark button is used to place bookmarks when reading a book (tap once), to access a list of available bookmarks (press and hold), and to confirm operations such as device shutdown and file deletion (tap once when prompted).

On the top edge of the device is a sliding switch that wakes up the PRS-505 from sleep/standby mode and also turns it on after complete shutdown. It has a line of 7 braille-sized raised dots on it. On the top of the device you may also feel the two memory card slots. The PRS-505 ships with grey plastic dummy cards in these slots to keep dust and other crud out of the slots. The slot next to the power switch is for proprietary Sony Memory Stick ProDuo cards. The slot on the right takes standard-sized SD cards. If you have a Victor Reader Stream, you will probably already be familiar with SD cards. Although both devices use Linux to run their firmware, they require completely different folder structures and folder naming conventions, so if you want to use a card you've already used for a different device, you'll have to erase its contents first.

On the right side of the screen is a vertical line of narrow rectangular buttons. From top to bottom they are numbered 1 through 9, with 0 on the very bottom. These buttons are used to type in page numbers for direct access, and also to make selections from menus. To the right of these, about halfway down are the page forward/backward keys.

On the bottom right, below the screen, there are two (or three, depending on how you view it) circular buttons. The small button by itself is the menu button, which allows access to menus and also lets you back up into a previous menu. Diagonally down and to the left is are two nested buttons, a ring with a smaller circular button inside it. The ring is a joypad. Although the PRS-505 doesn't have a cursor, it does highlight some areas of focus on the screen, similar to using the TAB key on your computer to browse through the list of links on a web page. The official manual for the device explains it a lot better than I can. The circular button inside the joypad ring confirms the selection of the highlighted text or menu item.

On the bottom edge below these buttons is the volume control. I don't advise using the PRS-505's audio playback capability because it eats through the battery fairly quickly, but if you do decide to use it, the volume control is a rocking switch, the right side of which increases the volume, and the left side decreases it. To the left of this is the headphone/speaker jack. Next is the AC input, for use with the AC power adapter. You can buy the official Sony adapter for the PRS-505, but a cheaper (and safe) alternative is a third-party power adapter made for the Sony PSP (a handheld gaming device). Next is the USB port. The PRS-505 comes with a mini USB cable that allows you to both charge the device and put content on it. Charging via USB is slower than using the AC adapter, and you can't use the device when it's connected via USB. You can use the device normally when it's plugged in to the AC adapter. The final indentation on the botton is an anchor for a neck or wrist strap. It's the same kind of anchor that is used on many cell phones and digital cameras.

If you jump back up to the bottom left of the front below the screen, there are three buttons. The big circular one is another page forward/backward control. There are three indentations. The big one and the smaller one on the top right will advance to the next page. The small one on the lower left will jump to the previous page. Up and to the left of the big button is the all-important font size button.

ADJUSTING FONTS
By default, all books open with the small font size. You can check to see what size font you are using by looking at the bottom left of the screen next to the battery indicator. There will be a capital letter S, M or L inside a circle. How big each font is depends on how the file was set up by its creator. You may find that the small font size in one file is the same size as the large font size of a different file! Unfortunately, there is not much you can do if you're stuck with a file that someone else has created.
If the small font size is too small to read comfortably, tap the font size button once and wait. It may take a minute or two for the machine to process the file and display the medium font size. If you find that the medium font is still to small, tap the button again and it will display the large font size. Tap the button again to go back to the small size. Unfortunately, you have to toggle through the font sizes in order. There is not a way to skip directly from small to large, or to go back from large to medium. The number of pages in the file changes with each font size, because fewer words can fit on the screen with larger font sizes.
Another way to increase the font size is to switch from portrait to landscape mode. Portrait mode is where the SONY logo is at the top. Landscape mode is where the SONY logo is on the right. You can switch to landscape mode from portrait mode by pressing and holding the font size button, or you change it in the Settings menu. You can switch back to portrait mode the same way. Landscape mode splits each portrait mode page into two parts. The top part will contain approximately the top 55% of the page, and the bottom part (which you get to using the page forward button) will contain the bottom 55%. This adds up to more than 100% because some text from the top part is displayed on the bottom for continuity. When you have finished reading the bottom part of the page, you can advance to the top of the next page using the page forward button, just as with portrait mode. Because only part of each page is displayed, small font in landscape mode will be larger than small font in portrait mode. For maximum font size, use the large font in landscape mode.
MAKING YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZED FILES
You can avoid some of the hassle of adjusting font sizes on the machine by making files to suit your own needs. In order to do this, you will need to have a DRM-free source file and some third-party conversion software.
If you are legally blind, and are a legal resident of the United States (or U.S. Citizen living abroad), you are eligible for NLS ebook downloads via Web-Braille (free) and Bookshare.org ($50/year membership fee plus a one-time $25 application fee). If you use these files as your source, please respect copyright and don't share them with anyone else.
One program you can use to convert files is Calibre. Calibre has the added bonus of being able to transfer your newly-converted file to your reader directly without having to use the Sony software. I suggest playing around with the settings using a small file and testing each change on your ebook reader to see what works best. Calibre has a simple design with large icons that is very low-vision friendly. I have not been able to test it with any screen reading or screen magnification programs, but I suspect it would probably work well. If you have specific accessibility concerns, you may even be able to get changes made to the program if you ask the main developer nicely.
Another program that can be used to create ebook files is Book Designer. Book Designer is more complicated to use, and significantly less low-vision friendly, but it offers more options and a greater degree of control over the output. I think it unlikely that it would work well with a screen reader, but it might be usable with a screen magnification program.

RESOURCES
Application for NLS services: http://nlstalkingbooks.org After registration, contact your network library for your Web-Braille login and password. You will need documentation of your visual impairment to qualify.
NFBTRANS: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/nfbtrans.asp Free braille transcription software to back-translate Web-Braille .brf files to .txt for conversion purposes
Bookshare: http://bookshare.org Text-only DAISY and .brf books for the blind and print-disabled. You will need documentation of your visual impairment to qualify. You can submit this directly, or if you are already a NLS patron, you can get verification of disability through NLS.
Calibre: http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download
Calibre documentation: http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/user_manual/
Calibre help forum: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166
Book Designer download: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11786
Book Designer tutorial: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Book...raphical_Guide
Colored Overlays: http://www.independentliving.com/pro...?number=622785 An assortment of colored overlays that can be cut to fit the screen.