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.

A new version of FineReader has just been released and the basic OCR accuracy seems to be much better than the previous version 9 (which was actually much worse than version 8 - we carried on using 8 because 9 was so bad). Here's a screenshot of a PDF image that was recognised using FineReader 9:

As you can see (and also hear, if you are using a screen reader), the recognition is pretty poor. Try right-clicking on the image and reading the alt text to see how bad it is.

Here's the same PDF page, opened and recognised using FineReader 10:

Much better! I've not had time to explore FineReader 10 in detail, but the user interface also seems cleaner and more intuitive. So all in all if you're struggling with FineReader 9 it might be worth upgrading to version 10.

You can try a 15 day trial copy from Abbyy and buy the program for about £69 from suppliers like iANSYST.

Happy scanning!

WH Smith are selling eBooks half price until 15 January. There are over 100,000 available and so you can get your hands on say the Twilight series for £4 each (no thanks), Rebus novels by Ian Rankin (that's more like it) as well as books by the likes of Barack Obama or Jeremy Clarkson. 

Most of the eBooks are electronic publication (EPUB) format which can be read with a Sony Reader or an iPhone or on a computer using the free Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) software. ADE leaves a lot to be desired in terms of accessibility though:

1. Most of the commercial eBooks are copy-protected so you can't read them with text-to-speech software or a screen reader.
2. The maximum font size is depends on your font size and resolution, but I estimate it to be about 20 pt.
   
3. You can't change colour of text or background.
4. You can't change font or line spacing.
   
5. Keyboard navigation is very limited.

ADE is OK if you basicaly want to see the pages on screen and click a key or switch to turn the pages, but readers with visual impairment or dyslexia may struggle.

However, if you've not looked at an EPUB book, now's your chance to buyone at half price. You can also get some free eBooks (e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Dracula) from the Adobe web site library.

The eBook revolution could be really good news for readers who struggle with standard printed books, but only if the eBook readers and the eBook formats are accessible. Adobe is working on improving the accessibility of ADE (see: Adobe eBooks - Update on Accessibility Support ) and the latest version of EasyReader can open EPUBs, but it can't read them out with text-to-speech because the text is copy-protected. So we need EPUB to let text-to-speech programs get at the text to read it out, and eBook readers that are accessible. Persuading publishers to provide accessible formats might be difficult but making an accessible eBook reader should be easy given that Adobe already has one - Adobe Reader. With Adobe Reader you can magnify the text massively, reflow to fit the screen, change colours, and it even has basic text-to-speech.