[Athen] Quick and dirty convert Bookshare to ePub tool/process?

[Deborah Armstrong via athen-list]

It is my understanding that all publisher quality books on bookshare are actually delivered to bookshare as epub. I heard this from two folks who used to work for bookshare.
And typically when you choose to download a book, you get a drop-down from which you can select epub.
However, if the book was provided by a volunteer who scanned it in, then epub will not appear in the drop-down and the quality may not be that great, depending on how much proofreading the volunteer did.
There's also the issue that the publisher can decide to submit the book without images.
If the book is available as Daisy with images, and images are needed by my student, and they don't like or want to use Daisy, then I usually ask bookshare to convert it to Word, which will retain those images. The process is automatic, and the results aren't as good if someone worked on it by hand, but you can always convert any daisy file to word using bookshare's tools and see what you get.  Then you can convert word to epub and more tools for that are readily available.
I'm seeing more and more books though where the publisher chose to not include images because they want a student to buy the printed book. And they rationalize that if the student can see they can see the pictures in that printed book and if the student cannot see, they don't need the images. This is of course crazy because a student with vision issues can use a tutor or AI to describe images, and a student with good vision is still going to want to have the images there in front of them onscreen. And most of my low fision students need to magnify an image to see it anyway, so images should always be included; don't be surprised however if they are missing!
I know this is a bit off topic, but if I need epub I usually have the bookshare automatic fairies convert it to word, then I confert the word to epub and check that images are or are not included.
Another point near this topic, is never -NEVER  -- use the automatic Braille conversion, it is absolutely terrible. You can get better Braille, even if you don't know Braille by taking the Word document in to Duxbury or even Braille Blaster, especially if it has some markup, and letting that software automatically convert.
When Bookshare converts to Braille it does not preserve any of the markup. And modern displays typically can handle Daisy and in some cases epub letting a Braille reader benefit from existing structure in a textbook.
Also, if a book on bookshare has limitations, minimal structure, bad formatting, no images - if it is poor quality I will give it to the student anyway, explaining the quality is crummy. I then tell the student to bring me their printed book and I will scan, convert and improve on what they got early. I find that many students will not bother but instead either use an eBook version which is reasonably accessible, or they'll put up with the crummy version from bookshare. This policy has saved me a ton of work since I'm only scanning and formatting books for students who need that extra effort.
And it's important to ensure your bookstore will allow the student to return the printed book in exchange for the eBook, often integrated in to a required lab. Not all the publishers' online platforms are accessible, but often they are, and there, the book is often better formatted than what comes out of bookshare.
Sorry for ranting some and going off-topic but as a person who myself requires alternate formats, I believe we do what we can and if we can push for publishers' online platforms to be more accessible we could eventually make our profession obsolete.
--Debee

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Susan Kelmer via athen-list
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2025 7:48 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Quick and dirty convert Bookshare to ePub tool/process?

I should know this but I've reached my frustration limit with publishers and Bookshare at the moment...

Who has a step by step process for turning rotten Bookshare Daisy files into ePubs so I can then extract text and do what I want with it?

The directions I'm finding online are wholly unhelpful and appear to be leaving out steps, and I'm lost.

Help!

Susan Kelmer
Alternate Format Production Program Manager
Disability Services
Division of Student Life
T 303 735 4836
www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices__;!!A-B3JKCz!F-eqzqop_E3TNjWBfnsH2M0yctR1akHfUuTImyRFcvb8eRuJa4h_2gF6l5Qd6HuvZHlKMcyj5UuGQUiXlz5ZFSYoHSRPZBs0Ur8$>


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