Rochdale Library Service installed Envisage, an offline version of their library catalogue tailored for visually impaired patrons, on four computers. Envisage allows patrons to search the catalogue through text-to-speech, large print, or by having text move across the screen. It provides simplified search and results screens to minimize visual clutter. While mostly used by visually impaired patrons, many others prefer it due to the large print and colors. The library is collecting feedback on Envisage to further improve the user experience and accessibility of their catalogue.

1. What Does Your
Catalogue Sound Like?
Steven Heywood
Rochdale Library Service
Expanding the Vision, 30th June 1998

2. Rochdale Library Service has recently installed
Envisage, an off–line copy of the Library Catalogue
tailored for visually–impaired people, in four libraries in
the Borough.
• Variations on a ―large print‖ version of the Catalogue
• A speech synthesiser can ―read‖ the text on the
screen
• The text on the screen can also be displayed as a
string which moves across the centre of the screen
for people with partial vision.

3. There are four main pieces of hardware:
1. An ―off the shelf‖ Gateway 2000 PC running
Windows 95
2. A Juno voice synthesiser
3. A Libris keyboard
4. A Libris keypad

4. The Envisage catalogue is a simple menu.
There are four options:
Title keyword search
Author search
Subject search — this doesn’t currently work for us because
of the way we have set up our catalogue.
• Other searches — some of these don’t work because we
don’t include the data in our bibliographic records.

7. The results of the search are a lot simpler than
those of the ordinary OPAC:
• We tried to keep the amount of bibliographical
information to a useful minimum so that we
didn’t have too much clutter on the screen.
• The only copy information we display is the
library and collection…

8. …and the item barcode number, which was our
mistake!
(as it happens, it can be useful, but it’s very
disconcerting to hear it out loud as a number).

11. All the Library Catalogue is available,
including:
• ―Ordinary‖ books;
• Large print collections;
• Cassettes and CDs;
• Sub–titled videos; and
• Materials in alternative formats such as
Braille.

12. If someone asked: ―How many visually–
impaired people have used Envisage?‖ we
couldn’t tell them.

13. The service is there for library customers to use —
they shouldn’t have to identify themselves as being
visually–impaired before we let them use it.
Many people who wouldn’t regard themselves as
visually–impaired seem to prefer to use Envisage to
the ordinary OPAC terminal — it’s colourful and the
writing’s bigger.

14. We’re currently one of seven library services in
the country using Envisage.
• It’s early days for the product
• It’s very early days for us.
• We are just starting to get a feel for how best to
encourage people to use it effectively.

15. There are a few things we’d like to suggest in
response to initial feedback from staff and the public,
including a sample group of visually-impaired people:
It would be nice if the commands listed on the
screen were colour–coded to correspond to the
colours on the keyboard;
We do need an indicator on the screen to tell people
to use the cursor keys to move down the screen to
get the copy information;

16. We’d like to change some of the menu options;
The keyboard doesn’t have touch typists’ marks on
the F and J keys;
It would be nice to have a choice of voices on the
synthesiser.

17. Our installation of Envisage has been one of the
happier episodes in Rochdale Library Service’s IT
development programme.
• The product is nice and has the potential to be a
lot nicer.
• Staff like it and are happy to encourage people
to use it.
Many thanks to the people who made it happen.