On 28th May we blogged that the CLA announced a new Print Disability Licence to replace the 'VIP' licence, and today we received our copy of this new licence. Why is this good news? Well, the Print Disability Licence is for:

• "an educational establishment or a body that is not conducted for profit" who
• "wishes to make and to distribute multiple copies of copyright material in a format accessible to persons who could not otherwise read or access such copyright material by reason of visual impairment or other disability where no such format is commercially available."

This means that holders of the Print Disability Licence can now legally make, for example, digital copies of books for pupils with dyslexia, learning difficulties, autism or hearing impairment. Some of the terms and conditions:

• You must legally possess an original copy of the book from whch you make the Accessible Copy.
• You cannot make an Accessible Copy if one is commercially available in a similar accessible format.
• Your Accessible Copy must contain "a statement that it is a copy of the original Work made under a CLA licence for the personal use of an Authorised Person".
• Your Accessible Copy must contain the title, name of author and publisher, and the published edition from which you have made your Accessible Copy.
• You can add facilities for navigation around digital formats and you can enlarge, reduce or change colour of text or illustrations, provided these changes do not "amount to a derogatory treatment of the Work".
• You can give an "Intermediate Copy" to other CLA licence holders. An Intermediate Copy is a copy which you have made as part of the production process - for example, it could be a digital file which you made in order to create a Large Print or a Braille copy.
• You must keep records of copies made, and send the records to CLA annually, on 1st May each year. The report should list the title, ISBN, author(s), publisher, edition, format, number of copies created and the date they were created.

This new licence will lead to big changes and developments because the potential 'market' for Accessible Copies is now much larger and more diverse. It means that charities like Calibre can lend all their audio books to dyslexic readers as well as those with visual impairment, that dyslexic readers will be able to download text files of books from The Seeing Ear, that local authority transcription services can share Accessible Copies far more freely than before, and importantly, it also means that all Print-Disabled pupils can download and use Accessible Copies of books from the Books for All Scotland Database.

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.

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.

This is a chance for you to help improve the accessibility of Glow. If Glow is to fulfil it's aims it needs to be accessible to every pupil in Scotland and one way of helping many pupils with visual or reading difficulties is through 'text-to-speech' software, so that pupils can have material on Glow read out to them by the computer. There are many text-to-speech programs for reading different types of digital text, such as:

• Rod Macaulay's WordTalk (which you can download free from CALL), can read out Word documents, for example, or
• TextHelp's PDFaloud, which can read PDFs such as digital textbooks or SQA exam papers,

but we also need a program for reading text from the web itself.

Again there are several options (see Allan's Reading the Web guide at  http://www.callscotland.org.uk/Resources/Publications/Information-Sheets/) , and one of them is Browsealoud from TextHelp Systems. Browsealoud is a free program that reads 'speech-enabled' web sites and also Word and PDF files on the web sites.TextHelp have agreed to 'speech-enable' the CALL Scotland and LTS web sites and also Glow until the end of January 2010, for us to evaluate. CALL’s speech-enabled web sites are:

• http://www.callscotland.org.uk
• http://www.adapteddigitalexams.org.uk/
• http://www.books4all.org.uk/
• http://www.communicationpassports.org.uk/
• http://www.thescottishvoice.org.uk/
• http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/

All LTS web sites (http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/) and also everything accessed through the Glow portal are speech-enabled.The pilot Books for All Scotland Database at http://www.booksforallscotland.org.uk/ is also speech-enabled.To read the web sites with Browsealoud you need to download it from http://www.browsealoud.com/page.asp?pg_id=80004.Jennifer MacDougal from LTS has agreed to set up a discussion forum for the Glow users and so once you have tried out Browsealoud on Glow, go to My Glow Groups > ASN Group and add your comments about it to the discussion. The direct URL for this is https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Additional%20Support%20for%20Learning/Lists/Pages/Discussions.aspxBrowsealoud is essentially a tool for reading web sites with text-to-speech software. It can help pupils with visual impairment, dyslexia, reading and learning difficulties or pupils who are not fluent English readers access information on web sites. It can speak using a number of different voices including Heather, the Scottish voice. To take part in this trial, download and run Browsealoud and then test it on Glow or on the CALL or LTS websites, and then log any comments or issues on the Glow group. If you can’t access Glow send an email to CALL at callscotland@ed.ac.uk. LTS are currently looking at how the accessibility of Glow can be improved, and a text-to-speech facility could be extremely useful, if not essential, for thousands of pupils in Scotland (not much point in having a national intranet if it isn’t accessible to all pupils in Scotland). Browsealoud is only one option for reading the web and so you might also like to look at some others such as Click Speak, a free add-on for Firefox, but it  is really important that we all have a chance to test this particular tool to find out if it does what we all want. Please comment on whether you think Browsealoud would help pupils access Glow, as well as any problems that you come across. Take a look at the video tours and user guides on the Browsealoud web site as well – see http://www.browsealoud.com/page.asp?pg_id=80006We’re aware that you won’t have much time before the end of term, but no doubt some keen people will be unable to resist the temptation to play with Browsealoud over the break, and there will be a few weeks at the start of next term for you to try it.Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

The latest edition of the Accessibility Action Group newsletter is well worth a read and shows how much is going on in the field of accessible formats. For example:

• new guidelines for publishers in how they should respond to requests for permission to adapt books or for digital versions of books;
• an update on the DCSF Accessible Textbook project in England;
• an update on the Right to Read Alliance eBook working group's  efforts to encourage accessible eBooks;
• news that Adobe plans to improve the accessibility of it's less-than-accessible Adobe Digital Editions software;
• the Publisher Lookup Awards for publishers who have been particularly helpful to print-disabled readers;
• new Pearson HTMLbooks - digital versions of (North American) textbooks for the same price as print copies - this is what we want from all publishers

and much more.