I am also very grateful to have an Optacon. I really don't think I would validate without it. I'm too much of a DP for that. <smile> Evan ----- Original Message ----- From: Lori Castner To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:48 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: validating as a totally blind person Hi, Monica, I have been a volunteer for less than a year, but I have both submitted and validated books. When I submit a book, I do read it from cover to cover as I do when validating. When submitting, I very often use my optacon to check questionable words that I can't figure out by context or by decripting scanos. I am very blessed to have an optacon, but this method can be very slow and time-consuming. When validating when I am uncertain of a word, particularly a proper name, I do a find for that word and if I find the same word a number of times in the text, I assume it is spelled correctly. With other unusual words such a names of plants, tools, cities, etc. I look for the word in the dictionary or google for it. These efforts seem to catch many problems. Context and decripting common scanos works for most issues. Hope this helps and I'm surely no expert. Cat Lover Lori ----- Original Message ----- From: Monica Svopa To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 3:43 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] validating as a totally blind person Hello to all. I probably shouldn't ask this question but I wasn't sure how to proceed. I was wondering how I as a blind individual could validate a book correctly. Since I can't read the print book, I wouldn't want there to be any mistakes. Do you have any suggestions as to how y'all do this? Thanks for your help. I don't validate or scan much but I'd like to do some. Sometimes books peak my interest but I hesitated because I wasn't sure how to handle it. Thanks. Monica Svopa