Transcript Document

Bookshare for Education
Digital Texts Revolutionize Learning
for Students with Print Disabilities,
Kindergarten through Graduate
School and Beyond
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Bookshare for Education
 Presenters
 Mark Snyderman, Moderator
 Office of the Undersecretary, U.S. Department of
Education
 Jim Fruchterman
 CEO, Benetech, and Project Director, Bookshare
 Karen Erickson
 Director, The Center for Literacy and Disability Studies
(CLDS), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
 Shayla Parker
 Law Student, Georgetown University
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Books without Barriers
 Agenda
 Accessible Materials:
The Federal Commitment
 Bookshare.org for Education
What is it?
How does it work?
 The Educational Need for
Accessible Materials for Students
with Print Disabilities
 Bookshare from a Graduate
Student Perspective
 Q&A
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What is Bookshare.org?
 Bookshare.org is an online library of accessible
media for readers with print disabilities.
 Over 26,000 members
 Over 3,000 schools and other
organizations
 Over 39,000 titles in the collection
Bookshare.org
believes that
people with print
disabilities should
have the same
ease of access to
books and
periodicals that
people without
disabilities enjoy.
 Hundreds of new books added every month
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Bookshare.org for Education
 In October 2007, Bookshare.org was awarded funding from the
federal Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to:
 Provide Bookshare.org content and services FREE to all
U.S. qualified print disabled students of any age
 Expand the Bookshare.org collection
 Focus on educational materials requested by
teachers
 Add textbooks from the NIMAC and publishers
 Scan Once, Share Many
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Benefits to Members
 Increased access to
materials for students with
print disabilities
 Free for qualified students
through an award from
OSEP
 Library is available online
24/7
 Flexible membership
options
 Free assistive technology
software downloads
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Bookshare.org Library





Textbooks
 Growing number available from
NIMAC, publishers and schools
Teacher Recommended Reading
Special Collections
 New York Times Best Sellers
 Newbery Winners
 Caldecott Winners
 Young Reader’s Choice
 Spanish Books
Publisher Partnerships
 Chapter books from Scholastic
 HarperCollins bestsellers
 Over 600 technical books from
O’Reilly Media
Periodicals
 Available through our
partnership with NFB Newsline
 150 national & regional
newspapers and magazines
NIMAC
National Instructional
Materials Access Center
Why?  The Individuals with
Disabilities Education
Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004
requires states to address the
critical difficulty in obtaining
accessible textbooks for students
with disabilities.
What?  Under the law, NIMAC
provides a national repository to
collect and store these files, in an
accessible format called NIMAS
(National Instructional Materials
Accessibility Standard) and
makes them available to states.
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Eligible Students
Disability
Qualified/Not Qualified
Examples of Certifying
Professionals
Qualified
A family doctor, ophthalmologist,
optometrist, teacher of the visually
impaired, Special Education
teacher, certification from the
National Library Service
Qualified
A family doctor or other medical
professional, physical therapist,
resource specialist, Special
Education teacher
Learning or Reading Disability
Students with a severe enough
disability, and a professional
certifying that the disability has
a physical basis
A neurologist, psychiatrist,
learning disability specialist,
Special Education teacher, school
psychologist, or clinical
psychologist with a background in
learning disabilities
Autism
Emotional Disabilities
ADHD
ESL and ELL
Not qualified, unless
accompanied by a visual or
physical disability, or a qualified
reading disability that has a
physical basis
Visual Impairment (VI), such as
blind or low vision
Physical Disability (PD) which
affects one’s ability to read print,
such as inability to hold a book
or turn pages
Examples above
Record of
disability is
kept at school
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Access to Books
Bookshare.org Downloads
Public domain books
Books with U.S. copyrights
Books with international
permissions
NIMAC-sourced books
Who Can Download
Student Qualification
Teachers and Students
Chafee Qualified
Educators (K-12 U.S. public
schools and agencies)
Chafee + IEP
Bookshare.org is
authorized to produce
digital books in accessible
formats through an
exemption in the U.S.
copyright law called the
Chafee Amendment.
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NIMAC/NIMAS
 State agencies ask Bookshare to convert K-12
textbooks from the NIMAC into student-ready forms
 One-week average processing time for NIMACsourced book requests by 2009
Teachers who are interested in
accessing textbooks that are
not in the NIMAC are advised
to contact their state’s NIMAC
coordinator first.
State contacts can
be found at
www.nimas.cast.org
 We encourage state and local education agencies to
partner with Bookshare.org in an effort to build the
world’s largest digital library of accessible media
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Membership Options

Everything is done online at Bookshare.org

Nonmembers
 Search by title or author
 Download public domain books

Individual Memberships for non-students
 $50/year with one-time $25 registration fee

Organizational Memberships
 Free downloads for all qualified U.S.
students through an award from OSEP
 Other organizations buy book download
packages

Individual Memberships for students
 Students under the age of 18 need
permission from parent/legal guardian
Free for U.S.
Educational agencies
Schools
Colleges and Universities
Students
Fee
Libraries
Resource centers
Rehabilitation agencies
Retirement communities
Group homes
Community centers
International
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Reading Books in the
DAISY Format
 DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System)
 Read books on a computer using visual presentation
and/or synthetic speech (multimodal)
 Makes file more readable and easy to navigate
 Includes page numbers and paragraphs
 Like HTML, plus some extra tags
 Convert and play on MP3 player
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Reading Books in the BRF Format
 BRF (Braille Ready Format)
 Use notetakers or refreshable Braille displays
 Download books to embosser
 Order hardcopy Braille books online through partnership
with Braille Institute
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Multimodal Reading
 Four ways to enjoy Bookshare.org books
 Listen to them (synthesized speech)
 View them enlarged (on a PC screen or printed)
 See and hear the words simultaneously
 Read Braille (digital or hardcopy)
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Compatible AT Software
 Any AT software supporting text-based files
Examples:
 HumanWare Victor Reader Soft
 Don Johnston Read:OutLoud
 Kurzweil 3000, 1000
 WYNN
Special free
version available
for download!
 OpenBook
 Window-Eyes
 JAWS
 ZoomText
 TextHelp
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Compatible AT Hardware
 Any AT hardware supporting text-based files
Examples:
 HumanWare VictorReader Stream and
ClassMate Reader
 BookCourier and BookPort
 Braille displays like the BrailleNote
 ICONtm
 MP3 players (Educator or Member can
convert)
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Bookshare.org at Home
 Access Bookshare.org from home on personal
computers to:
 Work on homework
 Read for pleasure
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Bookshare.org in Schools
 Students with print disabilities keep up with their
classmates
 Read and listen to books simultaneously
 Keep track of what they are reading
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Bookshare’s Goal
 That every student with a print disability has equal
access to materials as students without disabilities
experience:
 Access to the same books, periodicals and reference
materials
 Access at the same time
 Access at the same cost
 Access to high-quality media
 Access to free or affordable access technology
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Contact Information
 All contact information is on www.bookshare.org
 School and Organizational Memberships:
[email protected]
 Customer Service: [email protected]
 General Information: [email protected]
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Special Educators and Bookshare
 Why are accessible materials important for
students with print disabilities?
 Limited access to text for reading and listening has a
negative impact on vocabulary development.
 School-aged students learn ~3,000 new words each year
(Miller & Gildea, 1987; Nagy & Herman, 1987; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson,
1985)
 After 3rd grade, most of new words are acquired through
reading (Nagy, 1988; Nagy & Herman, 1987)
 Speech is not a substitute for reading/listening to text
because speech does not have the lexical diversity of
written language (Stanovich, West, Cunningham, Cipielewski, &
Siddiqui, 1996)
 Diversity of text types (breadth and depth) is required to
maximize vocabulary development (Gardner, 2004)
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Special Educators and Bookshare
 Why are accessible materials important for
students with print disabilities?

“…individual differences in exposure to print … affect both the
development of cognitive processes and the declarative
knowledge bases supportive of further gains in comprehension
growth.” (p.6, Stanovich, West, Cunningham, Cipielewski, and Siddiqui, 1996)

Quantity of text reading is significantly related to listening
comprehension ability (Hedrick & Cunningham, 2002)
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Special Educators and Bookshare
 What are the implications of accessible materials for
personnel preparation?
 Increased understanding of the relationship between
listening and reading comprehension (Carlisle, 1991; Stanovich,
1991)
 Readers & listeners must know at least 95% of the words
they encounter in text in order for basic comprehension to
occur (Hu & Nation, 2000; Laufer, 1989, 1997; Liu & Nation, 1985; Wixson
& Lipson, 1991)
 Increased understandings of Universal Design for
Learning and related instructional planning processes
(e.g., Planning for All Learners by CAST)
 Increased understandings of AT software and hardware
Students and Bookshare
 Shayla Parker discusses the challenges faced by students
with print disabilities in obtaining accessible materials
 Access technology
 Book scanning
 Disabled Student Services
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Q&A
Bookshare.org is a project of Benetech - www.benetech.org
Benetech’s nonprofit motto: Technology Serving Humanity
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Bookshare for Education
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