We're really very happy indeed to report that today the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) launched a new ‘Print Disability Licence’ to replace the old 'VIP' licence. The new licence has been extended to include all people with a 'print disability' - the previous licence was restricted to people with visual impairment or physical disability. This was clearly inequitable (as we pointed out in the 2007 Books for All Report) and so we are delighted that the new licence addresses this inequality. It means that dyslexic people are now covered under the licence.

Basically, the new licence allows not-for-profit organisations to make Accessible Copies of most published, copyright works and provide them to people with print disabilities who cannot read or access the printed copies. The Accessible Copy may be, for example, Large Print, Braille, audio (synthetic or recorded), digital (with or without text to speech), etc. The licence is free.

We've been waiting for the new licence for quite some time but now that it's here, it means that for example:

• books on the developing Books for All Scotland database can be downloaded for any print disabled pupil, not just those pupils with visual impairment or physical disability;
• books that we, or any other VIP licence holder has made, can be freely shared across the UK provided they are for use by print disabled readers;
• schools and local authorities in the 15 Scottish local authorities who hold VIP licences will be able to make and share their accessible copies with a much larger and wider range of pupils.

For children and young people in schools with dyslexia, learning difficulties, hearing impairment, or who may be on the autistic spectrum, this is very good news.

The new licence is the result of a lot of work by CLA, the Right to Read Alliance (of which CALL is a member) and the publishers' Accessibility Action Group.

Read more about the new licence in the CLA press release.

Chuffed!

(Right, let's get sourcing, adapting, making and sharing these Accessible Books.....)

Accessible Text: Guidelines for Good Practice, is a new publication from CALL Scotland on 'how to' produce accessible resources. 

Making your learning materials accessible to pupils with disabilities or additional support needs is not only good practice but is also necessary to meet equality legislation.  

Part 1 of the book, written by Fran Ranaldi, looks at the design of resources and covers issues such as the choice and size of font, use of images and colour and the visual layout and design. By following the guidelines in to the book, teachers should be able to create learning resources that can be more easily read by pupils with, for example, dyslexia, visual impairment, or learning difficulties.

Part 2, by Paul Nisbet, look at how resources can be made accessible in digital formats. Inceasingly, teachers are creating resources which will be accessed on screen as well as on paper, and this part of the book shows how digital accessibility can be built in when writing the material, with relatively little effort. 

You can download the book for free from CALL Scotland's web site. Altenatively, order print copies (£10) from CALL’s online shop. 

Fran Ranaldi is an experienced teacher who has worked for HMIe on the Review of Education for learners with dyslexia, the Scottish Government on Accessibly Guidelines and within her education authority on several projects for dyslexia and accessibility across the curriculum.

Paul Nisbet is Joint Coordinator of CALL Scotland and works directly with pupils with additional support needs and takes a lead role in current projects to help pupils access curriculum resources, such as Books for All, SQA digital exam papers, and The Scottish Voice. 

Preparation and dissemination of the book is funded by the Scottish Government Schools Directorate.

Bookshare has a new online learning module for people who want to learn more about accessible digital books and resources. It has a US focus, but has good examples, with video and audio clips, of why some pupils need books in accessible digital formats and why it makes a difference to their education.

Bookshare is a huge US database of over 70,000 titles in Daisy 3 and BRF (Braille) formats: it shows what you can do with $32 million over 5 years of federal money. Memo to Victoria Quay: any chance of similar funding for the Books for All Scotland Database?

About 5,000 of the Bookshare titles are available to readers and schools outside the USA - see the Bookshare UK and International Membership pages. Most of the books are fiction titles and so it's worth doing a search on the database (use the Advanced Search button and look for "Books available worldwide") to see if there are books which you want. If there are, you might want to join Bookshare. The cost of international membership is $25 initially plus a $75 annual fee; organisations such as schools and libraries and I think also local authority services can pay for individual pupils (at the individual membership rate), or by the number of books you want to download (30 books for $300, 60 books for $450, 100 books for $600). 

Membership also gives you free access to software for reading the Daisy books - Victor Reader Soft, which is probably best for readers with visual impairment, and Read OutLoud Bookshare Edition, which is designed more with dyslexia or reading difficulties in mind. With the BRF files, you can print out Braille copies.

Barrington Stoke, the Scottish publisher of high interest books for struggling readers, has released eBook versions of six of their titles.

The books are available from the i-Stars web site in Adobe PDF, Microsoft Reader or Zinio Whiteboard formats and you can buy a single home licence (£6.99) or a school licence (£25).

The six Barrington Stoke eBooks are:

• Alien;
• Gremlin;
• Sol Campbell;
• Death Leap;
• Flint;
• Respect!

We have been speaking to Barrington Stoke for some time to encourage them to release digital versions of their books, and so it's great to see it happening. In the wider scheme of things we would rather see publishers selling accessible digital copies of their books at an affordable price, than rely on our collective efforts to scan papers books into the computer and make digital versions.

One great thing about these new books is that they are accessible with text-to-speech: most commercial eBooks can't be read with text-to-speech software because the publisher has protected them to prevent them being copied, which also prevents the text-to-speech software getting at the text to read it. The Barrington Stoke books aren't protected in this way, so you can use text-to-speech to read them out.

The Zinio versions are designed for use on a whiteboard but can also be read on a PC using the free Zinio Reader software.

The Microsoft Reader versions can be opened on a PC or PDA using free Microsoft Reader software and the computer can also read them out if you install the free Microsoft Reader Text-to-speech package. The screenshot on the left below shows a book in Microsoft Reader - the text is being read out and highlighted as it is read.

The PDF books can be read on almost anything - Mac, PC, mobile phone, iPod etc using various versions of Adobe Reader software. The screen shots below shows a PDF book with a clickable index on the left of the screen, and two pages displayed side by side.

We hope that more publishers will follow Barrington Stoke's lead and make their books available in accessible digital formats.

eBooks have been around for some years now without making much impact but recently there has been a lot more buzz about them. There are a lot of interesting possibilities with eBooks for people with print disabilities but the main one is access to books: if accessible eBooks could be purchased direct from a publisher then we would no longer have to  contact the publisher to ask for a digital copy and wait while they find it, or rely on someone somewhere scanning the book into a digital format. For this to happen, we need accessible eBook readers and accessible eBooks.

The first eBook readers left a lot to be desired in terms of accessibilty, but the new Kindle devices (particularly the larger Kindle DX) looks more interesting. Amazon have been under pressure to improve the accessibility of the Kindle - for example the United States Justice Deptartment has agreed that three Universities will not buy or recommend the Kindle unless it is fully accessible.

On the new Kindle DX, it seems the text size can be up to about 20 point, and Kindle claim they are going to add a new font in the summer which will double this size (i.e. 40 point). Of course the Kindle can also read the text out using text-to-speech software: the voice is provided by Nuance and so it should be quite good (albeit American). A major limitation is that it can only read 'unprotected' eBooks, and most of the commercial books are protected to prevent them being copied. RNIB and others are lobbying for publishers to find a way to protect their interests and also make their books accessible, so we hope to see an improvement here.

The new Apple iPad also looks interesting because Apple says it can read out eBooks using 'VoiceOver', the iPad screen reader, and you can change the text size and also the font. We don't know yet if it will be able to read commercial eBooks, or if this function will be restricted, like the Kindle. To read more about the iPad accessibility features go to the iPad features web page on accessibility.

So it looks like things are moving fast in the world of accessible eBooks.

If you want to keep up to date with developments I recommend Denise Dwyer's Print for People blog. Denise is a Development Officer with RNIB and her blog is a really helpful up-to-date summary of accessibility developments in the publishing world.

Many people think that 'alternative format' means things like Large Print, Braille, audio, Daisy etc, but it also includes symbolised materials. Widgit software, who publish software for creating and using symbolised resources, are running a FREE day on symbols here in CALL on Wednesday 3rd March. Go here to book a place.

Widgit have pioneered the use of symbols in learning and communication for over 25 years and their software and services are used worldwide to create symbol-supported materials in print, onscreen and online. Information augmented by symbols can be helpful for people with learning, language and communication disabilities, dyslexia, those with English as a second language and students with literacy difficulties.

The first part of the day will look at incorporating symbol based information in a variety of communication media. There will be a focus on the importance of this for educational establishments such as schools, colleges and universities to provide accessible information as part of their learning and teaching, on their websites, as part of their general marketing strategies and within other services such as libraries, design units etc.

The second part of the day will provide an opportunity to have hands on experience of using the software and will provide delegates with the chance to try out different Widgit products including Communicate in Print (symbol dtp software to create books, worksheets, newsletters and posters etc) and Communicate Symwriter (a symbol and grid supported writing tool).

What you'll learn:
Incorporating symbol based information in a variety of communication media;
hands on experience of using Widgit software.

Another 54 books were added to the Books for All Scotland Database today.

There are 23 new books in PDF which have been produced by CALL Scotland. LTS funded the production of these books, which are scanned PDF copies of third and fourth year textbooks from various publishers including Heinemann, Leckie and Leckie, Hodder and Pulse. The books were originally produced for a pupil with physical disability and they have structure for easy navigation. They have been OCRd so that most of the text is readable with text-to-speech software, but some parts of books with very complex visual layouts are not accurate - the OCR process just doesn't work with squint text or low contrast text on coloured backgrounds.

There are also 31 new 'Classic' titles such as Frankenstein, Heart of Darkness, Kidnapped and Oliver Twist in PDF and Microsoft Reader format. Most of these books were produced by the participants on the Books for All course in Stirling last term: thanks to Anne Beveridge at LTS who checked, amended and collated these titles.

The new books can be used by pupils with visual or physical impairment - pupils with other print disabilities should not use them (yet) because the CLA licence under which they are made does not yet cover other disabilites (but we're told it will, any minute now...).

Teachers can access the Books for All Scotland Database via the Finding Books page or by going direct to the Database itself. To log in to the Database and download books you need a Scran password (all teachers in Scotland have one - someone in your school or local authority will know it) or you can log in via Glow.

The Books for All programme is about learning resources in accessible, alternative formats for people who cannot access standard printed books.

Sometimes this is due to, for example, severe dyslexia, visual impairment, blindness or physical impairment. In these case it is self-evident that the reader can't read a paper book because they either can't see, can't hold the book and turn pages, or just can't read.

But there are also many children and young people who have problems with reading when the cause is less obvious. Maybe they have a language difficulty, or a visual-perceptual problem, or maybe English is not their native tongue.

Or maybe they have never been read to as a child, never been comfortable with print, and have not had enough practice to become a fluent reader. (I read somewhere that you need to practice reading for 5,000 hours to become fluent.)

In these cases, should we try and teach the pupil to read, or should we use, say, audio books or digital books that can be read out by the computer? If we persevere with teaching literacy, will the pupil get frustrated and fall behind in class because they cannot read independently? By introducing books in accessible formats maybe we can prevent this frustration, help the reader be more independent, and at least give experience of language and literature. Maybe if we can encourage pupils to read books in accessible formats it will help motivate and develop general literacy and actually help develop reading skills? Maybe the opposite is true: if we give books in accessible formats, will they ever learn to read standard print?

Or should we try to both teach reading and also provide accessible formats so we have the best of both worlds - access to the curriculum and also development of reading skills?

This is a long introduction to a short blog to say that Pearson Education have published some interesting case studies and research reports about their Rapid Reading intervention programme which they say is "an award-winning, Wave 3 reading intervention programme that's been proven to deliver more than twice the normal rate of progress." Of course, there are many programmes and methods which make similar claims (see Dr. Chris Singleton's comprehensive review of teaching methods Interventions for Dyslexia) but the Rapid Reading videos and reports are interesting and well worth a look.

(And if anyone has answers to the questions posed above we'd be really keen to hear them....)

SQA have put up the 2009 adapted digital past papers on their web site for anyone to download. They cover all levels from Intermediate through to Advance Higher with a wide range of different subjects. This means you can now download papers from 2007, 2008 and 2009 for revision and practice.

In response to comments from centres, SQA have added 'tick boxes' to Part 1 of the Standard Grade Chemistry paper. Previously, you had to use the Comment/markup tools to draw a circle or mark the answer from the multiple choice, but now you just click with the mouse, which should be faster and simpler.

In 2009 there were 1,167 requests for Adaped Digital Question Papers from 73 centres on behalf of 422 candidates. To find out more about digital papers visit  CALL's dedicated web site http://www.adapteddigitalexams.org.uk/Home/, SQA's Assessment Arrangements site, or come on a CALL Scotland training course.

Another opportunity to learn how to make Books for All!

Learning & Teaching Scotland, on behalf of the Scottish Government, would like to invite you to send a representative from your local authority to attend Books for All CPD event at Stirling Management Centre.  This free CPD is a four day training course, developed and delivered by CALL Scotland and is aimed at practitioners who currently produce books in alternative formats (such as large and adapted print, digital books and audio), for pupils with print disabilities as a result of visual, physical or learning impairment.

The course information is detailed below:

• Day 1 & 2 – 10th & 11th February 2010
• Day 3 & 4 – 25th & 26th March 2010 

The venue for all training is Stirling Management Centre and overnight accommodation and refreshments (if required) will be paid for by the Books for All Database project.   

Some of the topics that will be covered at the training include:

• Sourcing accessible resources
• Scanning papers resources into digital format
• Making publisher PDFs accessible
• Making "intermediate" files
• Converting intermediate files to different alternative formats
• Copyright
  

If you are interested and would like someone from your authority to attend then please let Gayle Monteith at LTS know by Monday 25th January.  Please note that places are limited on this course and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

If you are unable to attend the training, you can join the books for all user group on Glow.  We have formed a user group of experienced practitioners who, as part of their practice, create and use these types of resources. The aim of the group is to share information, materials and practical strategies to support their use.

If you would like to know more about Books for All in general go to http://www.booksforall.org.uk/ and to find out more about the Books for All Database go to http://www.booksforallscotland.org.uk/.

Once you have confirmed your interest in this course, LTS will confirm if a place is available and send you a booking form for the training.

If you have any questions about the venue, funding or arrangements please contact Gayle Monteith at LTS. If you have any questions about the course content contact Paul Nisbet or Stuart Aitken at CALL.

The Audio Revision Project at Lochaber High School is a really good example of how learning resources can be provided in alternative formats. The project is a collaboration between Dyslexia Lochaber, who raised the funding and organised some volunteer narrators, and Lochaber High School. Revision materials (some produced by staff, some commercial publications) were recorded and made available as podcasts on the school web site and the end result of the project is a set of revision materials for Standard Grade and Higher courses for all the subjects offered by the school in audio format. Pupils can listen to the revision materials online or download them to their own computers or audio players. Have a look at the project site and listen to what's been recorded.

Spoken Ink is a new web site offering downloadable audio short stories by authors such as Roald Dahl, Angela Carter, Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood "and a host of new and unknown talent." Most of the stories cost 99p to download and you can listen to them on your computer, MP3 player, mobile phone etc.

Lots of teachers, pupils and parents are interested in scanning books into the computer, converting it readable text, so that for example:

• pupils with physical disabilities can press a key on the keyboard, or click a switch, to turn the pages, or
• dyslexic pupils can have the text read out with text-to-speech software, or
• pupils with sight loss can use text-to-speech software or magnify the text to read the book.

There’s a good article by Jim Kauppila on making digital files from printed materials in the latest issue of Closing the Gap. Jim's project has scanned hundreds of books and thousands of pages and in the process has gathered a lot of experience. You can read the article by signing up for a 14 day trial of Closing the Gap. Jim advocates a similar process to the one that we covered in the recent Books for All courses at Stirling, which involves:

1. Scanning the book
2. Converting the scanned image to text using FineReader Pro optical character recognition (OCR)
3. Checking and editing the text with FineReader Pro.
4. Saving from FineReader as PDF (which makes a digital book that looks like the original) and Plain Text or RTF (for further editing in Word, say, if you want for example a Large Print copy)
5. Saving from RTF/Plain text/Word as MP3 audio.
6. Adding structure to the PDF with Acrobat Pro.

The nice thing about this workflow model is that it generates several different types of accessible format for lots of pupils with different literacy support needs.

Paul Nisbet and Stuart Aitken have developed a comprehensive 4 day course that attempts to cover techniques for making learning resources in accessible formats. The course is split into two sections and the first half was held on 29/30 September, at Stirling Management Centre. It was attended by colleagues from across the country - from Shetland to Dumfries and Galloway, and was very successful. It was great to have a meeting of minds both geographically and also in terms of remit - there were people who make Large print, Braille and audio books for pupils with visual impairments and also staff who make digital books for pupils with other print disabilities due to physical impairments or dyslexia. This mix made the two days very stimulating (and hard work).

Over these first two days we covered:

• where to find and source accessible formats;
• accessibility of different formats for different groups of print-disabled pupils;
• how to add structure to digital books and make 'Intermediate Files' using Microsoft Word;
• how to convert these Intermediate Files to different audio, print and digital formats;
• adapting digital files from publishers.

The second part of the course will be on 19/20 November and will cover scanning and OCR, making interactive resources, uploading accessible books to the Books for All Database, and copyright issues.

We hope to repeat the four day course in February/March 2010 initially, and also in summer 2010 and/or the 2010/2011 session.

These courses are funded and organised by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS): attendence was FREE for participants. If you would like to find out more, contact Gayle Monteith at LTS (G.Monteith@LTScotland.org.uk).

Book Awards

The Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children’s Books is an innovative nationwide reading project in which children and young people from every corner of Scotland read and vote for their favourite Scottish children's books of the year. Last year:

• Over 18,000 children were involved and an amazing 9,541 votes were cast;
• Over 350 schools and libraries in every corner of Scotland, from Aberdeen to Dumfries; Shetland to Arran, took part;
• The 2008 awards ceremony brought 550 young judges from across Scotland together to see their peers act out the winning books.

The Awards were originally set up by the Scottish Arts Council in 1999 and are now run by Scottish Book Trust. More information is on the Scottish Book Trust web site.

The shortlist

Children can vote for their favourite book from a shortlist in each of three categories:

Early Years (0 - 7 years)

• Manfred the Baddie by John Fardell;
• Pink by Lynne Rickards and Barbara Chamberlain;
• Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

Younger Readers (8 - 11 years)

• Dino Egg by Charlie James;
• The Eleventh Orphan by Joan Lingard;
• First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts by Lari Don.

Older Readers (11 - 16 years)

• Crash by J A Henderson;
• Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray;
• The Reckoning by James Jauncey.

But what about disabled children who can’t read the books?

CALL Scotland has worked with the Scottish Book Trust and the authors and publishers to create accessible digital versions of the nine shortlisted books. The idea is that children and young people with physical, visual and reading or dyslexic difficulties, who can’t read the paper books, can read the digital books instead and take part in the awards.

Children with spinal injury, cerebral palsy or other physical impairments can click a switch or press a key on a computer, to turn pages and read the books by themselves. Dyslexic readers or children with visual impairments can change the font size and/or colours on screen, or use text-to-speech software to read the books.

The books can be read out by the computer using "Heather", the high quality Scottish computer voice that is available free for schools and pupils from CALL Scotland’s web site at http://www.thescottishvoice.org.uk/. Accessible digital versions of the shortlisted books are available free of charge from CALL Scotland by completing the 'Request Digital Copy' online form' via the Books for All website or phoning 0131 651 6236.

In a related initiative, RNIB Scotland have produced Large Print, Braille and audio copies of the books.