BARD Screen Reader: Search BARD

Vikki: Hi, I'm Vikki Vaughan. And in today's workshop, we'll explore searching for a BARD book. If you checked out the second workshop in this series, you learned all about the main menu in BARD Express.

If you're new to the series, you might want to go through that workshop first. As it provides a detailed look into command central for all things BARD. 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 series 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. Okay, let's get started. We've signed into our BARD account and have opened the BARD Express program on our computer. We land on the first button in the main menu, Bookshelf.

Screen Reader: Bookshelf, Ctrl + B button.

Vikki: Here in the main menu we have many different options for searching for our desired book. In the previous workshop in this series, we explored searching for the recently added books and magazines, as well as the most popular books. After these handy tools, we have four other buttons that help us search the BARD library. We press our Tab key to move from one button to the next. Of course we can also use our shortcut keys to quickly jump to any of these search criteria. For example, if we wish to browse by subject, Ctrl + J will take us there.

Screen Reader: List, adventure, 1 of 125.

Vikki: We'll press the Esc key to jump back to our main menu.

Screen Reader: Bookshelf, Ctrl + B button.

Vikki: Each time we return to the main menu we land back on our bookshelf button. When we wish to search for a particular series in BARD, Ctrl + G will open that window.

Screen Reader: List, "Only" series, subscribed, no, 1 of 7,278.

Vikki: Once again, we'll press the Esc key to jump back to our main menu.

Screen Reader: Bookshelf, Ctrl + B button.

Vikki: You may have noticed that the main menu also has a Browse Magazines button. Our keyboard shortcut Ctrl + I begins that search.

Screen Reader: List, AARP Magazine and Bulletin, audio, subscribed, no, 1 of 76.

Vikki: No surprise, we'll press the Esc key to jump back to our main menu.

Screen Reader: Bookshelf, Ctrl + B button.

Vikki: We can also return to our main menu from anywhere in BARD Express with Ctrl + M. Before we start our search, let's pick our preferred format. This tells BARD which format we want when we search for a book. We press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + E to open the format selection control.

Screen Reader: Format Selection, preferred format grouping, please select your preferred item format. Audio radio button checked, Alt + A.

Vikki: We use our arrow keys to select from audio, braille or audio and braille materials.

Screen Reader: Audio radio button checked, Alt + A.

Vikki: Once we've made our selection we press the Enter key to finalize our selection.

Screen Reader: Bookshelf, Ctrl + B button.

Vikki: In today's workshop we'll use the Search BARD button in our main menu. Let's use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + S to open this window.

Screen Reader: Search BARD, press F1 for help, type your search term and press Enter to search, edit blank.

Vikki: We'll hold down the Shift key and press Tab twice to move back to the dropdown box labeled Search Type.

Screen Reader: Search type combo box by keyword collapsed.

Vikki: We use our arrow keys to move between the four different search types: keyword, book number, author, or title. We can even use the first few letters of an author's name or book title to search for a book. Let's say we wish to search for a book and we think we know the title but we're not sure. We think it's called "All the light we cannot see." Let's arrow up our list to the keyword option.

Screen Reader: By author beginning with. By book number. By keyword.

Vikki: This option will allow us to search for all the books that contain those words. We can also narrow our search results by using the filter button or Alt + I. This allows us to exclude or include various subjects. For more details about this helpful feature have a look at the recently added and most popular books workshop in this series. Now let's Tab to our search edit field.

Screen Reader: Edit read only selected keyword list, separated by spaces, multiple. Search BARD, press F1 for help. Type your search term and press Enter to search, edit blank.

Vikki: We type in keywords "all the light we cannot see" and then press Enter to begin the search.

Screen Reader: Please wait, searching for "all the light we cannot see," loaded Search BARD, all the light we cannot. Search BARD, list.

Vikki: The available books that contain those keywords are presented in a list view. The focus is on the first title in the list. As with all lists, we use our handy arrow keys to browse through the list.

Screen Reader: "All the light we cannot see" a novel, author, Doerr, Anthony, 2 of 5.

Vikki: In an earlier workshop we discussed a couple of different ways we can view and select books that we wish to download. They are the standard mode and the advanced mode. With the standard mode we select one book at a time. The advanced mode allows us to select multiple items from the list. We toggle between the two modes with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L for list. Let's try out the advanced mode. We'll hold down our Ctrl key and press and release the L key.

Screen Reader: Please wait, advanced mode, list.

Vikki: We have a quick notification window that tells us we are now in the advanced mode.

Screen Reader: "All the light we cannot see," a novel, checkbox selected, not checked, author, Doerr, Anthony, subject, bestsellers/war stories.

Vikki: And we can press our Ctrl key to pause speech. We've located our desired book, and because we're in the advanced mode we hear lots of details about the book. Let's press the space bar to select it.

Screen Reader: Space, checked.

Vikki: This places a check in the box next to the title. From here we can add the book to our wishlist or download it. Be sure to join me for the next workshop in this series where we'll learn how to download and transfer our book to an NLS cartridge. To wrap up today's workshop let's have a look at the last two options on this page. Let's move to the book details button with our keyboard shortcut Alt + B. When we press Enter a new window appears with loads of details about our selected title.

Screen Reader: Title, edit, read only selected, "All the light we cannot see," a novel.

Vikki: If you'd like to explore the book details option, have a look at the recently added and most popular books workshop in this series. Okay, let's wind up back at our Search BARD window with Ctrl + S.

Screen Reader: Search BARD, press F1 for help, type your search term and press Enter to search. Edit "all the light we cannot see."

Vikki: We'll have a look at our final button in this window, the Sort Order button. Let's press Alt + T and press Enter to open it.

Screen Reader: Column Sort, Sort by Most Relevant, Ascending button.

Vikki: We Tab through lots of different sorting options, including alphabetical, reading time, title, author, subject, and others.

Screen Reader: Sort by Most Relevant, Descending button, Sort by Title, from A to Z button.

Vikki: We use our Spacebar to select our desired sorting option and close this window. In today's workshop we learned all about searching for books in BARD Express. I'm Vikki Vaughan, and I thank you for joining me.