SensusAccess is a self-service solution that automates the conversion of documents into a range of alternative formats including digital Braille, MP3, DAISY and e-books. The service can also be used to remediate otherwise inaccessible documents such as image-only PDF files or scanned images into more accessible formats.
SensusAccess is intended as a self-service solution for print-impaired students, faculty and alumni at universities and colleges, and complements the accessibility services usually offered by educational institutions. The service can also be used by faculty to convert lecture notes and other educational material into accessible formats.
SensusAccess is powered by the award-winning RoboBraille service and supports a multitude of languages beyond English. As such, SensusAccess can also be used as a mainstream learning technology, for example as a language learning tool, as a tool to convert academic papers into e-books or editable documents or as a way of turning textbook material into MP3-files.
SensusAccess offers four different categories of services:
Braille services
Transcription of documents in contracted and uncontracted Braille in accordance with the Braille code for Unified English Braille (UEB) as well as the national systems for Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, British English, American English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Spanish. The documents can furthermore be formatted and paginated, and delivered as ready-to-emboss files in a variety of digital Braille formats.
Audio services
Conversion into plain MP3 files and well as DAISY Talking Books, including Daisy books with spoken math. The audio conversion features currently include high-quality voices for Arabic, Arabic/English bilingual, Bulgarian, British and American English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, Greenlandic, French, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Castilian and Latin American Spanish, and Welsh.
E-book services
Documents can be converted into EPUB, EPUB3, EPUB3 with media overlays and Mobi Pocket (Amazon Kindle) e-book formats. Furthermore, EPUB may be converted into Mobi Pocket and vice versa. To accommodate users with low vision, the base line of the body text in an e-book may be raised to allow for more appropriate text scaling in mainstream e-book readers.
Accessibility services
Otherwise inaccessible documents such as image files in GIF, TIFF, JPG, BMP, PNG, PCX, DCX, J2K, JP2, JPX, DJV and image-only PDF, as well as all types of PDF files can be converted to more accessible formats including tagged PDF, DOC, DOCX, Word XML, XLS, XLSX, CVS, text, RTF and HTML. The service furthermore supports conversion of Microsoft Office documents into tagged pdf and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into RTF files and web-projects.
Terms of use
Use of the SensusAccess service is subject to the following terms and conditions:
- Use of SensusAccess is subject to a service agreement between an institutional user (aka the subscribing institution) and Sensus.
- Users must use the service in accordance with any terms and conditions set out by the subscription institution.
- Users must use the service in accordance with copyright legislation for the jurisdiction in which the subscribing institution is located.
- Users should not upload any personal and/or sensitive information to the service for conversion.
- SensusAccess must only be used for non-commercial purposes.