Type in answers

Read questions with Text-to-Speech

Use Drawing Tools

Highlight text and circle numbers to answer questions

Use voice to answer question or to comment on pupil's work

Draw shapes and graphs

Measure dimensions and angles

Load2Learn is a database of downloadable accessible textbooks and images that has been set up by RNIB and Dyslexia Action with funding from the Department for Education. It's similar to the Books for All Database (we gave them some input and it's actually hosted by Scran, same as B4A) but when it was first set up, there was a membership subscription. Happily, it's now FREE! and so anyone who is working in schools with print-disabled pupils should join immediately and start getting access to more accessible titles.

To join, one member of staff in a school or service applies for membership to create a School group and then invites other staff to join the group. Then members of the group can search for and download books and images.

Since it's funded by the Department for Education, many of the secondary school books are the (English and Welsh) National Curriculum - AQA, GCSE etc - and so not relevant for most Scottish schools, but there are also many titles which are.

For example, Nelson Thornes have made a lot of their books available as PDFs - New Maths in Action; Scientifica, and there are many novels and primary textbooks available too.

Recently I was looking for accessible digital copies of Kes and Blood Brothers for a pupil and neither were available on B4A or Seeing Ear, but both are on Load2Learn.

The Load2Learn titles are offered in a range of different formats:

• PDFs, which look just like the paper book and so will suit some learners;
• Word files, which can be read on screen or converted into other formats such as Large print or Braille;
• ePUB, which can be read on iPads, tablets and smartphones;
• audio books. 

• The Books for All Database
• The Seeing Ear
• Load2Learn

plus of course commercial eBook venders such as Amazon, Waterstones, WH Smith and the iBook Store.

New Guidance

SQA have published new guidance documents for schools who intend to use the SQA Digital Question Papers and Digital Answer Booklets in this year's exam diet. They have up to date advice on how to set up computers and software, and revised guidance for candidates:

• ‘Digital Question Papers: Guidance for Centres’ 
• ‘Digital Question Papers: Guidance for Candidates’.

and can be downloaded from the SQA web site.

There are also new versions of the Digital Answer Booklets. These are used by candidates answering 'question only' papers (i.e. papers that do not have the red answer boxes - mostly for Standard Grade Credit, Intermediate 2, Higher and Advanced Higher papers). Most of the Answer Booklets in Word format are now single pages that expand as the candidate writes (saving paper when they are printed, because there will be fewer blank pages at the end), and there are new booklets for maths and business management.

The Answer booklets are available in PDF and Word formats. Most candidates will probably be best to use the Word versions because:

• the Word formatting and editing tools are better;
• text flows from page to page;
• writing support tools such as word prediction and speech recognition are more reliable;
• learners can use equation editors such as Efofex to create scientific and mathematical formulae, and graphs.

Data Booklets

Digital Data Booklets in PDF are now available for Chemistry, Physics and TechnologicalStudies. The booklets have bookmarks (table of contents) so that candidates can easily find their way to the relevant tables. These should be particularly helpful for candidates with physical disabilities who may find it hard to handle the paper booklets, or those with visual impairment, who will be able to magnify the data on the screen.

Last week a colleague in a local authority got a quote for a single licence for Acrobat Pro from his Procurement department, for £480.  

This is not good use of public money, given that you can get it for £58.58 per licence, plus £20 for the DVD, from Education Scotland (ex VAT). (Note that their web site is out of date and still has Acrobat Pro 9 but when you order, you get Pro X.)

Or, try Academia who apparently have it for £56.70 plus £17.40 for the CD (plus VAT).

So, if you want to save some money, get your procurement department to order Acrobat Pro from one of these suppliers and save yourself £400 a pop. 

(Thanks to Sandra O'Neill for getting the current prices.)

109 new books have just been added to the Books for All Database. They are all Large Print PDFs which have been created by the VTSS team in Edinburgh, and we are grateful to them for sharing these accessible copies via the Database. 

The books can be downloaded and printed out for pupils with visual difficulties, and they can also be read on screen, which can be helpful to learners with dyslexia and reading difficulties, pupils with physical disabilities who have difficulty holding the paper book and turning pages. 

Learners can read the books on computer using free Adobe Reader software, which lets you zoom in and out to change the size, and adjust the text and page colours. With most of the books, the text can be read out using either the free built-in Adobe Read Out Loud, or other text readers such as Ivona MiniReader, ClaroRead, Co:Writer, Penfriend or PDFaloud.  Pupils can use the Adobe Reader commenting and markup tools to highlight key passages and add their own typed or recorded audio notes. To find out more, take a look at our Video Guides and Quick Guides.

You can find the new books on the Database here. (Note you have to log in to the database see the new books).

One of the requests from the staff who attended the Digital Papers Focus Group meeting in October 2011 was for SQA to provide answer booklets in Microsoft Word format. While answer booklets have been provided as PDF documents, some staff felt that the Word format would be more suitable for some candidates. You can now download answer booklets in Word / DOC format from the SQA web site.

The main advantage of using PDF answer booklets with Adobe Reader is that candidates can use the same program to access both question paper and answer booklet. However, disadvantages of the PDF answer booklets are: 

• Each page contains a separate text box for the answer and the candidate's text does not automatically flow from one page to another.
• The font and size are fixed, and formatting is basic.
• Inserting symbols, formulae and equations is awkward.
• Drawing tools are basic.
• PDFaloud text-to-speech software does not highlight the text in the answer booklet as it reads, and it reads the whole page - you can't just read a sentence, word or paragraph.

• Word is a much better word processor than an Adobe Reader text box! The candidate can change fonts, sizes, styles, use formatting etc etc.
• Symbols, formulae, equations and diagrams can be easily inserted.
• A wider range of text-to-speech programs can be used to read out your answers, including the free WordTalk reader.
• Speech recognition can be used to dictate into Word, including the free Windows 7 speech recognition software.
• Support tools for mind-mapping, spellchecking and word prediction (if permitted by SQA) tend to work better with Word than Adobe Reader.

Craig Mill, e-Learning Advisor at the JISC Regional Support Centre NE in Edinburgh, has written a very good guide to creating accessible Word and PDF documents which you can download from the RSC NE e-Inclusion web site. The Guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution which means you can repurpose the content to suit your needs.

Craig has also written a tutorial on how to make Daisy digital talking books using the free Save as Daisy plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 and Open Writer. You can read the tutorial at http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.org.uk/e-inclusion/?p=1262.

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.