BARD Screen Reader: Browsing BARD's Recently Added and Most Popular Books

Vikki: Hi, I'm Vikki Vaughan, and in today's workshop, we'll explore a couple of neat search tools in BARD Express. These tools allow us to browse the BARD library for their most recently added books, and their most popular books. This series is intended for Screen Reader users. If you prefer to use your mouse, be sure to check out the low vision version of this workshop on the Hadley website.

Now it's important to note that we must have an active BARD account to use BARD Express. If you'd like to learn more, have a look at the first workshop in this series to learn how to set up your own free account. We'll start off from our main menu. The focus is on the first button in the menu, the Bookshelf.

Screen Reader: Main Menu, Bookshelf, Control plus B button.

Vikki: Let's use the keyboard shortcut, Control plus R, to select Recently Added Books.

Screen Reader: Please wait, Recently Added Books and Magazines, press F1 for help list. God rest ye, royal gentlemen, author, Bowen, Rhys, one of 150.

Vikki: The focus lands on the list of the books and magazines that have been added to the BARD collection in the last 10 days. We also have the option to see materials that have been added in the last one day, 30 days, or 45 days. Since the focus is on the first title in the list, let's press Shift plus Tab three times, to move back to the time range combo box, to select another time range.

Screen Reader: Added read only selected, showing item 1 to 50- Next. Filter. Time range combo box 10 days collapsed sets how many days back to search.

Vikki: We use our arrow key to move to the 30 days time range.

Screen Reader: Please wait. Loading Recently Added Books and Magazines.

Vikki: Whenever we select one of the time ranges, we hear a notification, which informs us that the books have been downloaded to the list for our review. Pressing our Enter key closes this message.

Screen Reader: Time range combo box 30 days collapsed sets how many days back to search.

Vikki: Let's tab to our next button, entitled Filter.

Screen Reader: Filter, Alt plus I button.

Vikki: And press the Spacebar to open our filter window.

Screen Reader: Space. Item type combo box books and magazines collapsed, use this control to select regular books or music.

Vikki: I really like this feature. It lets us narrow the results of our search to subjects that interest us. Here we have a list of all of the subjects in the BARD collection. All of the subjects are selected by default. Let's Tab to the Uncheck All button.

Screen Reader: Subject categories grouping. Edit read only selected, 125 of 125 subjects are selected. 37 subjects available. Check All button. Uncheck All button.

Vikki: Then press the Spacebar to select it.

Screen Reader: Space, pressed.

Vikki: Now, let's Tab to our list of subjects.

Screen Reader: Only show available subjects, checkbox not checked. Subject list list, Adventure checkbox not checked.

Vikki: We use our arrow keys to move through the list and select only the subjects that look interesting to us.

Screen Reader: Animals and Wildlife, checkbox selected not checked. Arabic, checkbox selected not checked. Arts, checkbox selected not checked. Astronomy and astronautics, checkbox selected not checked. Band Music, checkbox selected not checked. Bestsellers, checkbox selected not checked.

Vikki: We press our Spacebar to check or uncheck the checkboxes, next to each subject.

Screen Reader: Space.

Vikki: Let's select several subjects from the list.

Screen Reader: Biography, checkbox selected not checked. Space. Checked.

Vikki: Once we've made our selections, we press the Enter key to create a new list that includes only our subjects of interest.

Screen Reader: Please wait. Loading Recently Added Books and Magazines. Page one. Loaded Recently Added Books and Magazines.

Vikki: We find ourselves in our list of titles. From here, we arrow through the list to explore BARD's recently added books and our chosen subject areas.

Screen Reader: Here, State, the si- Nina, the old- Out of many, The lone star, The crayon man, Enemy at the gates, Send a runner, The butler, The boys: a memoir of Hollywood and family, author, Howard, Ron/Howard, Bryce Dallas/Howard Clint, 13 of 37.

Vikki: Let's say we found a book that looks interesting, but we'd like more information.

Screen Reader: Recently Added Books and Magazines, press F1 for help list. The boys.

Vikki: We use our keyboard shortcut, Alt plus B, to open the book details window.

Screen Reader: Title edit, read only, selected The boys: a memoir of Hollywood and family.

Vikki: Here, we can Tab through lots of helpful information, such as title, author, subject area, annotation, narrator, reading time and format. From here, we have a couple of options. We can download the book, or add it to our Wish List. We select the desired button with our keyboard shortcuts, Alt plus D downloads our book, while Alt plus W adds it to our Wish List. Let's press the Escape key to move back to our Recently Added list.

Screen Reader: Recently Added Books and Magazines, press F1 for help list. The boys: a memoir of Hollywood and family, author.

Vikki: A little side note, books and magazine titles in Bard Express can be displayed in one of two ways, standard or advanced mode. The standard mode is the default mode. It only allows us to select one book at a time, while the advanced mode allows us to select multiple items from the list. Another difference between the two modes is the way books are displayed in our list. In standard mode, we hear the title and the author. Here in standard mode, our book list displays two columns, one with the title of the book, and the other with the author's name. Now, let's use our keyboard shortcut, Control plus L, to switch to the advanced mode for comparison.

Screen Reader: The boys: a memoir of Hollywood and family, checkbox selected not checked, author, Howard, Ron/Howard, Bryce Dallas/Howard Clint, subject, Stage and Screen/Bestsellers.

Vikki: And we can press our Control key to Paul's speech. In this workshop, we'll be using the standard mode.

Screen Reader: Bookshelf, Control plus B button.

Vikki: Back to the Main Menu, let's move to our next button, Most Popular Books, with Control plus D.

Screen Reader: Please wait. Most Popular Books, press F1 for help list. The Whistler: a novel, author, Grisham, John, one of 50.

Vikki: Here, we see a list of the books most frequently requested by other BARD users. As with the Recently Added option, we can filter our search results, add a book to our Wish List, or download it. We can also view the books' details, and sort the order of our list.

In today's workshop, we learned about browsing BARD's recently added and most popular books. I hope you'll join us in our next workshop, where we'll explore other methods for searching the BARD library, to find our favorite books. I'm Vikki Vaughan, and I thank you for joining me.