Books for All Blog

SQA answer booklets in Word format are now available

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:13:11

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.

Using answer booklets in DOC or Word format does mean using one program to read the paper and a different one to type answers, but the advantages are:

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.

Thanks to the team at SQA for listening and acting!

SQA Answer Booklets in Word format are now available

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:11:19

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.

Using answer booklets in DOC or Word format does mean using one program to read the paper and a different one to type answers, but the advantages are:

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.

Thanks to the team at SQA for listening and acting!

New Quick Guide - Calibre and the Kindle

Allan Wilson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:20:20

Most people who use a Kindle simply download the books they want from the Amazon web site. But what can you do if you want to read something else on your Kindle? The Kindle recognises Kindle (.azw), Text (.txt) and Mobi (.mobi) files and can also view (but not read out) PDFs. It cannot currently handle E-Pub files, so if the book or resource you are looking for is only available in E-Pub format, you need to convert it, using a program such as Calibre.

Calibre is a free eBook management program that you can download from the Calibre web site. It is a very comprehensive program that allows you to search for and download eBooks from the internet, view them and manage your collection. It also allows you to convert between the various file formats used by different eBook readers, so that you can read your eBook on, for example, a Kindle. Calibre also allows you to download online editions of newspapers and magazines from all around the world.

Some aspects of Calibre are a little quirky and it does not have built-in text-to-speech, though it links well with free TTS programs, such as NaturalReader and Ivona Minireader. Nevertheless, it is a very useful program for anybody using digital books.

CALL have now produced a Quick Guide to Using Calibre to Read E-Books and Convert E-Pub Files for the Kindle, which can be downloaded from the Quick Guide section of the CALL web site, under Books for All.

More 'Books for All' Quick Guides

More than 30 further Quick Guides are available in this section covering many different aspects of finding and adapting books for learners with a print disability. Titles include:

- Accessible Formats from Local Authority Library Services

- Accessing Books for All Scotland Database via Scran

- Copyright and Books for All

- Creating interactive digital resources with Adobe Acrobat Professional

- Free eBooks-eTexts and audio files from the Internet

- How to navigate to the Books for All Scotland database from within Glow

- Kindle for PC Accessibility Plugin

- Making Accessible Digital Reading Books

- Making Maths Resources

- Scanning into Word with FineReader 10

iBooks 2, iBooks Author and digital textbooks

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:15:57

Yesterday Apple launched iBooks 2, a new version of the iBooks app for iThingys; iBooks Author, a program for the Mac which is for writing and designing iBooks, and a range of interactive textbooks. The video about the interactive textbooks video a well worth a look - very promotional but also inspiring, and particularly relevant for those of us involved in supporting students with print disabilities.

Coincidentally, yesterday we ran a course for the first time on eBooks, Kindles and iPads. Preparing for it was an educational experience for Stuart, Sandra, Craig and I, and we learned a lot about the features and also limitations of Kindles, iPads and commercial eBooks.

A few observations, just from this one course:

Over half the teachers on the course owned a Kindle.
A teacher from a Primary unit for pupils with visual impairment has 6 Kindles and she says she's almost stopped using paper large print completely - she emails the materials to the Kindles and the pupils use large font sizes on the devices instead. It saves a lot of paper, printing and therefore money, and the pupils prefer the Kindles to most (not all) of the paper large print books (books with large colour diagrams might not be that good on the Kindle screen). It's also a lot quicker - printing out 800 pages of 36 pt text takes a long time, whereas emailing the file to the Kindles takes seconds.
Another teacher on the course has a son who is dyslexic. He used to need coloured overlays to read books and was never a great reader, but he can see the Kindle screen display: she says he now spends hours reading books on the Kindle whereas before he never read for pleasure.
Participants generally felt that the Kindle, iPad, iPod etc have a considerable 'cool' factor, which is of course a big issue. And because they are mainstream devices, you don't look that different if you use one to read books.
The eBook formats and readers are definitely becoming more accessible - bigger range of fonts, options to change colours and font sizes, better access with text-to-speech software.
Some public libraries (Edinburgh, Dundee and South Ayrshire, at least) are now offering eBooks on loan. You can borrow a book and read it on your computer, iPod, iPad, Android device etc.
The most exciting thing, for me, is the huge increase in the availability of books and materials - as well as Kindle, we have iBooks, WH Smith, Google Book store. Although the commercial eBook formats and readers may not give us everything we want in terms of accessibility (yet), they are getting there, and we are already seeing how the technology can give print disabled pupils access to learning materials in a way that is quicker, cheaper, easier and more independent than what we had before.

PS If you've not seen this fine example of a new page-turning technology, take a look - it's fun.

Including All Children in the Scottish Children's Book Awards

Robert Stewart — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:16:50

The 2011 Scottish Children's Book Awards 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. Votes MUST reach Scottish Book Trust by 5.30pm on Friday 27th January 2012 to be included in the final count.

Last year:

over 40,000 children registered and an amazing 17,000 votes were cast;
children and young people from every local authority in Scotland, from Aberdeen to Dumfries; Shetland to Arran, took part;
nearly 1,000 accessible copies of the books were provided to young judges by RNIB and CALL.

The awards were originally set up by the Scottish Arts Council in 1999 and are now run by Scottish Book Trust.

Children can vote for their favourite book, from a shortlist in each of three categories, either as individual readers or as part of a reading group in a school, library or bookshop. The shortlisted books are:

Early Years (0 - 7 years)

Dear Vampa by Ross Collins
The Loon on the Moon by Emily Golden
Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray

Younger Readers (8 - 11 years)

Zac and the Dream Pirates by Ross MacKenzie
There's a Hamster in my Pocket! by Franzeska G Ewart
The Case of the London Dragonfish by Joan Lennon

Older Readers (11 - 16 years)

Wasted by Nicola Morgan
The Blackhope Enigma by Teresa Flavin
The Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin

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 or access the paper books, can read the digital books instead and take part in the awards. For example:

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 The Scottish Voice web site.

The books are available free of charge. Readers and schools can request accessible digital copies of the book(s) they wish to read via the Books for All website or phoning 0131 651 6236.

Slowing Down an Audio Book

Allan Wilson — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:27:59

We were recently asked how to slow down the reading of text on an audio book by a teacher some of whose pupils have reading difficulties. She was using Barrington Stokes books, accompanied by audio on CD as her pupils found it easier to follow the printed text if they could listen to the audio recording at the same time. Unfortunately, the text was read too quickly for some of her pupils to follow easily.

If you are using Windows Media Player to play the audio recording of the book, it is possible to slow down the play back speed.

Begin playing a file.
Click the arrow below the 'Now Playing' tab, at the top of the screen, point to Enhancements, and then click Play Speed Settings. (see image, right)
Move the Play Speed slider to the speed at which you want to play the content, or click the Slow, Normal, or Fast link.

The full instructions are available online at:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Change-playback-speed-in-Windows-Media-Player.

New TeeJay secondary books on the Books for All Database

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:53:37

We have just uploaded the six TeeJay Maths secondary books to the Books for All Database, which means that all the TeeJay textbooks are now available for pupils with print disabilities to use. The files have been kindly supplied to us by Tom and John at TeeJay, and there are strict terms and conditions regarding who can download them and use them: they are only to be used by upils who cannot access the printed books..

The books are in PDF format and so are accessible on screen for learners with physical or motor impairments, mild visual impairment, or reading difficulties. When you open them in Adobe Reader you can:

use keyboard or mouse to navigate;
zoom in and out (press CTRL + and CTRL - or use the buttons on the toolbar);
use text-to-speech to have the text read out;
use the TypeWriter tool or the Comment and Markup tools to type answers on the page, add drawings and diagrams, highlight text, and add labels and notes.

See this video for how to use some of these facilities in Adobe Reader.A few caveats, however:

if you use the built-in Read Out Loud tool in Adobe Reader, you'll find it tends to read the whole page, so you're better off with a text reader where you can select what you want to read, like PDFaloud, ClaroRead, Natural Reader, Penfriend, Ivonas MiniReader, etc;
the books don't re-flow and you can't change the page colours - something to do with the way they were originally laid out.

You can also read the books with the new free Nook Study reader software. This has built-in text-to-speech which can use high quality voices like Heather and Stuart, and it highlights the text as it reads. You can select the text you want to have read out, so it's a bit better than Adobe Reader's own Read Out Loud tool. Nook Study also has study tools for bookmarking, highlighting and adding notes to the book. See Allan's blog for more on Nook Study.

New Video and Quick Guide index on the Books for All web site

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:11:39

We have added a new section to the Books for All web site which gathers together all the quick guides and also the new video guides on the Education Scotland web site, into separate pages. It should be much easier to navigate and find the resources you need.

We'll be adding to these in the coming months and if you have any suggestions for topics that need covered please add a comment or let us know.

2011 SQA Adapted Digital Papers now available

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:50:26

The 2011 adapted digital papers are now available on the SQA web site. There are 228 papers covering all levels and a very wide range of subjects. They can be freely downloaded at school or home so you can use them for whole class teaching on the whiteboard, or for revision and practice at school or home. There are now 5 years' worth of past papers available on the SQA web site, so there is plenty of material there for revision and practice.

Adobe Reader X and PDFaloud 3.0 - don't bother

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:20:01

When Adobe Reader X first appeared we tested it and said that it worked with PDFaloud 3.0 (see previous blog). This was true, on my ancient Windows XP laptop. However, we've now been using it for some months on a range of different machines and operating systems and it simply hasn't been reliable. On Windows XP, the Reader X/PDFaloud combination seems to work a lot of the time, but it's definitely bad news on Windows 7: I just got a new laptop and it doesn't work at all.

As previously reported, TextHelp are not going to upgrade PDFaloud 3.0 and have stopped selling it through Learning and Teaching Scotland.

TextHelp say that their latest Read and Write Gold 10 includes a version of PDFaloud which does work with Adobe Reader X, but Read and Write Gold is a lot more expensive than PDFaloud was (£1995 for a secondary school site licence).

So our advice is: stick with Adobe Reader 8 or 9; don't upgrade to Reader X. If you have to have Reader X, take a look at some of the text to speech tools listed in the previous blog.

Tarheel Reader Books on iPad

Sally Millar — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:32:59

Jane Farrall in Melbourne Australia has just published on her blog a really useful step by step instructions for how to get a free book from the Tarheel Reader site into an iPad. Good way to make appropriate materials available without having to make them yourself. (You could also run the book online, which would be even quicker and easier, but downloading it as a powerpoint into iBooks means it can be always available and stay there for the child to enjoy again and again.

If you don't know about the TarheelReader site, go and have a look. There are many short and very simple stories there, freely useable and downloadable, made in Powerpoint, all with picture and speech support, one line of text, ideal for our emergent readers and learners with complex additional support needs. For example , see here, 'my cat is fat' (choose a voice on top left and off you go). (The quality can be a bit variable, so you do need to check before you select a book for a pupil. Some are a bit too 'American- mind you, there's nothing to stop us uploading our own books to the site, good idea!)

Technology and ASN: Information Day for Parents 12 November

Stuart Aitken — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:57:10

There are still a few places available for any parent interested in coming along to Saturday's Parent Information Day on 12th November 2011. You can find out about and try many of the specialised technologies available to support children and young people with additional support needs. Following on from our everpopular annual Family Fun Technology Days, Saturday 12th November will have a similar format but this time it's just for parents.

The day will run 10.00 to 2.00pm at CALL Scotland and will be a mix of displays, presentations, hands-on and a chance for one-to-one sessions with CALL Scotland staff and, of course, meet other parents. Cost is £10 and a light sandwich lunch is provided.

Presentations

After consulting with parent members of National Parent Forum Scotland we’re running short presentations covering:

Overview of CALL services
Digital Question Papers
Apps for iPad, iPod, iPhone - we're delighted that parent Kate Farrell agreed to run this session and be available on the day
Books for All
Low tech to high tech communication aids
AccessApps / MyStudyBar / Windows 7 speech recognition

Workstations

Running in parallel with the presentations we'll have a range of workstations to try things out, discuss issues, have your questions answered. Topics include:

Software for dyslexia including NaturalReader, ClaroRead, Dragon Naturally Speaking, as well as information about Reading Pens
Digital question papers or digital exams - find out how many schools are using them, what teachers are doing to support their use and how successful they're proving with pupil in helping them to become independent, successful learners and confident individuals
Books for All - how this can help schools and authorities meet their duties under the Equality Act 2010 to provide information in accessible alternative formats
Apps for iPads, iPods, iPhones for symbols users, reading books, writing and a host of other education applications.
AccessApps, MyStudyBar and speech recognition directly into PCs running Windows 7
Low tech as well as high tech communication aids - from symbol communication books, Personal Communication Passports through to dynamic screen display systems
Alternative access to computers - switches, switch interfaces, adapted mice, keyboards and much much more

To find out more download the timetable for the day and you can book a place online.

A quick way to get Stuart to work with PDFaloud

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:29:12

Following on from the previous post re PDFaloud not offering you Stuart, Robert here in CALL has written a script which finds all the PDFaloud safe voice lists on your Windows computer and adds Stuart to them.

Here's what to do:

Install Stuart first.
Save the file to your computer.
Find the file (it's called install-stuart-to-safevoices.zip.), double click on it to open or unzip it, and then double click on "install.cmd"
It will then update the PDFaloud safe voices with Stuart.
Restart Adobe Reader and PDFaloud should offer you Stuart.

How to use the new "Stuart" voice with PDFaloud

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:45:29

The new Scottish male computer voice is now available for download from CALL's web site. 'Stuart' works with most text-to-speech programs including for example ClaroRead, Co:Writer, PDFaloud, Penfriend, Read and Write Gold and WordTalk.

However, if you install Stuart on your computer, you won't see it in the list of voices offered by PDFaloud. This is because PDFaloud offers you voices from a list of 'safe voices' that have been tested with PDFaloud. This doesn't necessarily mean another voice won't work - it may just mean that Texthelp haven't tested it. Since Stuart is brand new, he isn't in the safe voices list and so you won't see him.

You can add Stuart to the safe voices list by opening the 'safevoices.ini' file that is usually to be found in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\plug_ins\Texthelp, adding the voice, and then saving the file again.

Step 1: Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\plug_ins\Texthelp and double click on "safevoice.ini" so that it opens in Notepad.

Step 2: Scroll down to the bottom of the list and type in "CereVoice Stuart - English (Scotland)". Make sure the name of the voice that you type in is exactly as it appears in the Speech tab of the Windows Control Panel.

Step 3: Save the file.

Step 4: Restart Adobe Reader and Stuart should now be in the PDFaloud list of voices.

Step 5: Enjoy reading your digital papers with a bloke's voice ;).

Speech recognition and SQA Digital Question Papers

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:58:07

A common question we get from staff, parents and students is "Can I use speech recognition software to dictate my answers into the computer in an examination?" and so SQA funded us to spend some time trying to answer this. We've written a report with the results of the tests we've carried out on Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Windows 7 speech recognition, and WordQ+SpeakQ and you can download it from here.

We found that:

The accuracy and reliability of speech recognition software has improved considerably in recent years and all the programs tested were functional and seemed effective when dictating into a word processor. So if you want to use speech recognition to dictate extended answers into Microsoft Word for the Standard Grade English Writing paper, or Higher History, for example, then all of the programs can be used.

However, Windows speech recognition is not functional for dictating into SQA digital question papers, and so we do not recommend it for use in examinations unless the candidate is only intending to dictate into a word processor.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the most well known speech recognition program and can be used to dictate into both digital question papers and to a word processor. It is probably the most accurate, is relatively easy to train and use and gives voice control over formatting and over the computer in general. Dragon has text-to-speech for reading back the dictated text, and the Premium version can also play back a recording of the dictation to help with finding and correcting errors. For single user copies, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium is available with an educational discount (£68) and the 100-user Professional school license at £895 would seem to be relatively good value for schools who wish to make the software available to a large number of pupils. The educational discounts are availabel through Pugh or Dyslexic.com.

WordQ + SpeakQ is speech recognition software specifically designed for users who have difficulties with literacy. It uses the Windows speech recognition system, but accessed using a different, simpler interface. It has text-to-speech to help get through the training process; it can read back each phrase as it is dictated; it has text-to-speech for proof-reading; and it provides word prediction. SpeakQ can be used to dictate into SQA digital papers and also to word processors. WordQ + SpeakQ is arguably simpler to use than Dragon and the integrated text-to-speech and word prediction does make it a more attractive option for writers with reading and writing difficulties. WordQ + SpeakQ requires use of the keyboard and so it is not suitable for users who wish to control the computer completely by voice. A single user license for WordQ + SpeakQ is £199 and a site licence is £1995 from Assistive Solutions.

Speech recognition software may have considerable potential to enable some candidates to work independently and to rely less on scribes, and we are thinking it would be useful to organise some trials in schools to investigate this potential and to look at the practicalities of using speech recognition in exams. If you are interested please contact us.

PDFaloud to be discontinued

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:22:43

TextHelp, publishers of Read and Write Gold and PDFaloud, have decided that they will no longer sell PDFaloud as a standalone program. Since 2008, Scottish schools have been able to buy a site licence for PDFaloud for £295 from Learning and Teaching Scotland, under a special licencing deal. We helped set up this scheme because we felt that PDFaloud was a simple and easy to use tool for reading digital exams and other PDFs, and £295 for a secondary school licence we felt was relatively good value. I believe that Education Scotland still have two boxed sets still in stock so contact them quick if you want to get PDFaloud.

So, what are the alternatives if you want to have your digital papers or PDF textbooks read out by the computer? Here are some of the options:

Adobe Reader Read Out Loud

Adobe Reader has a basic built-in free text reader. Click on View > Read Out Loud > Activate Read Out Loud. You can listen to the current page or the whole paper but a better method is to choose the ‘Select’ tool (Tools > Select and Zoom > Select Tool) and then click on some text. Read Out Loud will read the text where you have clicked. It won’t highlight the words, it usually reads a whole paragraph (and you can’t tell it to only read a sentence or individual word) but it’s free and built in to Adobe Reader.

Read and Write Gold

TextHelp's Read and Write Gold includes PDFaloud, and some schools or local authorities already have Read and Write Gold. You need Read and Write Gold 8.1 or later because earlier versions can't read from Adobe Reader 8 or 9. Read and Write Gold can read from anything, not just PDFs, and the program has lots of other tools for suporting reading, writing and studying. However, Read and Write Gold is more expensive than PDFaloud at £320 for a single user licence, £1,150 for a primary site and £1,995 for a secondary site. TextHelp are offering to upgrade a secondary PDFaloud site licence to Read and Write Gold version 10 for £1,350. Read and Write Gold can be installed or run direct from a USB stick.

ClaroRead

The latest version 5.7 of ClaroRead is much better at reading PDFs than previous versions, and it now does a good job of reading and highlighting the text in the PDF as it reads. Like Read and Write Gold, ClaroRead can read from anything including for example Microsoft Word and internet browsers. It also comes with good voices and tools such as word prediction, spellchecking and scanning. ClaroRead costs from £49 for a single user licence and various site licence options are available, e.g. £795 for up to 250 students, £1,050 for up to 1,000 students. ClaroRead can be installed or run direct from a USB stick.

Co:Writer 6

With the latest version of the Co:Writer word predictor you can select some text, click the >> button in the Co:Writer window and choose Speak to have it read out. The text is not highlighted as it is read. Co:Writer costs £39 per licence for Scottish schools, from Education Scotland.

Penfriend XL

The Penfriend word predictor can read text from a PDF. You select the text, copy it, and then Penfriend will read and highlight it in a separate window. Penfriend costs £24.99 per user for Scottish schools from Education Scotland. When you copy the text from the PDF, it adds a paragraph mark after each line, which means that the voice hesitates when it comes to the end of the line. This can be off-putting compared to PDFaloud and ClaroRead, which don't generally hesitate at the end of each line. Penfriend can be installed or run direct from a USB stick.

Free text readers: Natural Reader, IVONA Minireader and Balabolka

There are many free text readers available and we like Natural Reader, Ivona Minireader and Balabolka because they are straightforward and easy to use and work with the Scottish voices. With Natural Reader and Ivona, you select the text you want to read and then click the 'Play' button or press a hotkey. The text then gets read out, but it is not highlighted in the PDF as it reads. Like Penfriend, these programs generally hesitate at the end of each line of the PDF because they think there is a paragraph mark.

Alternatively, you can copy the text to the clipboard and then Natural Reader and Balabolka can read it out, and highlight it, in a separate window. This takes up space on the screen and is not as good as having it read and highlighted in the document itself. There is a 'portable' version of Balabolka which runs from a USB stick. Balabolka is also part of the AccessApps and MyStudyBar suites.

New 'how-to' Books for All videos from CALL and Education Scotland

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:55:24

Earlier this year Stuart and I were videoed finding, using and making books in accessible formats, and the videos are now available on the Education Scotland web site. They provide a quick and reasonably (we think!) straightforward introduction to Books for All, and you can download the videos and the transcripts for CPD. The only unfortunate thing about the videos are the dodgy presenters.

There are also some very illuminating and useful comments from staff and young people about how accessible formats can be used in practice, and why it's so important for learners to have books and materials that they can read and access independently.

Essential viewing!

Including All Children in the Scottish Children's Book Awards

Robert Stewart — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:30:29

over 40,000 children registered and an amazing 17,000 votes were cast;
children and young people from every local authority in Scotland, from Aberdeen to Dumfries; Shetland to Arran, took part;
nearly 1,000 accessible copies of the books were provided to young judges by RNIB and CALL.

The awards were originally set up by the Scottish Arts Council in 1999 and are now run by Scottish Book Trust.

Early Years (0 - 7 years)

Dear Vampa by Ross Collins
The Loon on the Moon by Emily Golden
Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray

Younger Readers (8 - 11 years)

Zac and the Dream Pirates by Ross MacKenzie
There's a Hamster in my Pocket! by Franzeska G Ewart
The Case of the London Dragonfish by Joan Lennon

Older Readers (11 - 16 years)

Wasted by Nicola Morgan
The Blackhope Enigma by Teresa Flavin
The Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin

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

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 The Scottish Voice web site.

The books are available free of charge. Readers and schools can request accessible digital copies of the book(s) they wish to read via the Books for All website or phoning 0131 651 6236.

The case against Assistive Technology

Sally Millar — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:16:32

Here's a wee film called 'The Case Against Assistive Technology' to get everyone going at the beginning of the new session.

Daisy Books now on the Books for All Database

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:06:25

We are pleased to say that there are now 59 books in Daisy format availlable from the Books for All Scotland Database. These books were produced by Kim Walker and Jamie Cutherbertson and the team at RNIB Scotland Transcription Centre in Glasgow with Scottish Government funding and we are grateful to them for sharing these Accessible Books via the Database. Thanks also to Patricia Carroll, Jennifer MacDougall and Anne Beverdige at LTS for liaising with RNIB to obtain the books.

What are Daisy books are why would you be interested in them?

These Daisy books give you both text and synchronised human narration, so for novels especially, this can be a more pleasant and engaging reading experience than using a computer (even with Heather!) to read the text. Across the Barricades, by Joan Lingard, for example, which is set in Northern Ireland, is narrated by a reader with an Irish accent. The Daisy talking book format was originally developed for people with visual impairment, but Daisy books are also very accessible for anyone with a print disability because they (should) have built-in structure for easy navigation; the reader software has keyboard shortcuts for readers with visual or physical impairments, and readers with visual or learning difficulties or dyslexia can read the books using either the recorded narration (if provided in the book) or text-to-speech.

How can I read the Daisy books?

You can read Daisy books on lots of different devices. On a Windows PC, for example, you can use the free Amis Reader. This gives you control over font size and colours, keyboard control, and it highlights the text as it is read out. Another popular Daisy book reader is Dolphin's EasyReader.Or if you have an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, you can use a Daisy book reader such as Read2Go, InDaisy or DaisyWorm to play the Daisy book.

You can also listen to the Daisy audio with a Daisy audio player.

If you want to find out more about Daisy books visit the Daisy Consortium web site. In the meantime, happy reading!

Paul Nisbet receives University of Edinburgh Principal's Medal

Stuart Aitken — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:05:40

CALL staff were delighted and proud that Paul Nisbet, Joint Co-ordinator at CALL, was awarded the 2011 Principal's Medal at a special University of Edinburgh graduation ceremony. The award is in recognition of Paul's magnificent contribution for his services to the Scottish education community, and beyond. Sir Tim O'Shea, the University's Vice-Chancellor and Principal is shown presenting Paul with his medal.

In his acceptance speech to an audience of newly qualified teachers receiving their diplomas Paul drew attention to the work of CALL Scotland, contributions to enhance the lives of children, young people and adults with disabilities or who have additional support needs. That work has taken place over many years since CALL was established in 1983.

In addition to his regular work as a leading member of the CALL team, using assistive technology and computer software to support many hundreds of pupils in Scottish schools, Paul has taken a leading role in a number of innovative developments:

In the 1980s he designed the original CALLbox and many other interfaces which allowed children with severe disabilities to interact with a computer for the first time.
He helped develop the Smart Wheelchair, a computer-controlled wheelchair for children with severe and multiple disabilities, now manufactured in the UK by Smile Rehab.
He worked in partnership with the Scottish Qualifications Authority on the introduction of Adapted Digital Exams - digital versions of exams for young people who are intellectually capable of passing, but are unable to use the traditional written format. Hundreds of children have used these digital papers to sit national exams - a world first for Scotland!
He encouraged the development of WordTalk, an internationally-recognised text-to-speech reader for Microsoft Word that helps tens of thousands of people with reading difficulties.
He has led the Books for All developments in Scotland, making books and print materials more accessible for people with a print disability.

Further information on the award can be found on The University of Edinburgh web site.

The Scottish Male Voice is chosen!

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:54:57

Well the votes are in and we can now reveal that the winner is....... SPA!

We emailed samples of six male voices out to people who had downloaded Heather, to key contacts in local authorities, FE colleges and Universities, to ICTSLS, members of SICTDG, members of Augmentative Communication in Practice Scotland, and to children and young people who use Assistive Technology.

We received feedback, comments and scores from 82 people. SPA got the highest overall score, and was also the voice that most people preferred as the first and second choice.

SPA went into the recording studio a few weeks ago to start recording about 30 hours worth of reading, and we

understand that he has just finished the recording. It will take CereProc a few weeks to process the recordings and create the voice, and we hope to have it available for download from our Scottish Voice web site by the start of the new school term.

We now need a name... and we might have a vote for that too... so watch this space.

Thanks to everyone who listened to the voices and gave us the feedback.

Paul

Only one week to go until ICT and Inclusion - have you booked in, yet?

Sally Millar — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:18:04

The ICT and Inclusion Day is always a really useful and enjoyable day, so if you can possibly come along, you should! Book now in case it gets booked out. It's completely FREE and you are given refreshments and lunch for nothing. You will see ALL the latest hardware and software and hear practical, information-packed (and SHORT) presentations on your choice of topics all geared towards learners with additional support for learning needs. You can focus on school and / or Further Education. You will meet and network with colleagues and interesting new contacts including presenters and suppliers. Don't miss it.

New Kindle for PC software has text-to-speech

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 31 May 2011 12:57:58

The Kindle for PC Accessibility Plugin is now available for UK customers (and also for users in Australia, Canada and the U.S.). Kindle for PC is free software for reading Kindle eBooks on your Windows PC. The main feature of the new plugin is a text-to-speech tool which means that blind, visually impaired and severely dyslexic readers can listen to the book being read out by the computer. Kindle for PC Accessibility plugin has:

Text-to-speech reading with adjustable voice settings
Voice-guided menu navigation
Large font sizes
High contrast reading mode
Keyboard navigation
Accessible shortcuts

The Kindle reader software can be used to read out the text of the book, and blind readers can use Jaws or NVDA to read the menus and navigation instructions.

The software comes with two American voices - one male and one female - which are OK but not as good as Heather, for example. You can start, pause and stop the speech and read the current, previous or next sentences (see the list of shortcuts below). You can't use other voices on your computer with the Kindle software, and it doesn't highlight the text as it reads.

Like the standard Kindle reader, the font size can be massive (up to about 90pt), and you can change the colours (white on black, black on white, black on sepia).

For keyboard only users, there are keyboard shortcuts to navigate around the software and the eBooks.

The new Kindle reader is a significant step towards making commercial eBooks accessible for readers with print disabilities. There are now over 700,000 books available from the Amazon UK website and so it's a huge source of digital books.

I've updated our Kindle Quick Guide with the new features and you can now download it.

Adobe Reader X and Acrobat Pro X: Pro X is much better for making accessible digital resources

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:27:50

Adobe have just released new versions of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Pro. Adobe Reader is the free program that most people use for reading PDF files, such as the Hodder Gibson textbooks that we distribute for pupils who cannot read the paper versions, or the SQA digital exam papers. Acrobat Pro is what we use for creating and editing PDF files.

We will examine the new versions and update our information and web sites in the near future, but for now here are a few important comments.

Adobe Reader X

You can download the new Reader X free from Adobe's web site. It is similar to version 9, except that most of the tools now appear to the right of the screen rather than as toolbars along the top. This makes it looks tidier and less confusing because there aren't loads of mysterious buttons littering your screen, but old pros like us get slightly irritated because it takes more clicks to find things.

The goods news is that PDFaloud and other text-to-speech programs still work with Reader X. You may have to re-install PDFaloud, or manually copy it from the old Reader 9 to the new Reader X folder. (See our FAQs on how to do this.)

Another good development is that you can add highlights and sticky notes to any PDF (not just ones which have been 'reader-enabled') which can be useful for pupils who are studying with PDF textbooks, or for staff who want to set and mark homework using PDF.

We'll review the new version in more detail soon - watch this space.

Adobe Acrobat Pro X

The new Acrobat Pro X has lots of new and refined features, but there are two in particular which make it really useful for those of us who want to make digital learning resources.

New editable, correctable scanning and OCR

With Acrobat Pro 9 you could scan paper resources into PDF and convert into readable text, but you couldn't correct any scanning mistakes. With Pro X, you can! This means that schools can, for example, scan paper prelims to PDF and correct any misrecognised words so that the questions can be spoken out correctly using text-to-speech software. With Pro 9, you would have had to buy another program like FineReader to do your corrections. We have tested the scanning and OCR with Pro X and it's pretty straightforward and easy to use.

Save to Word or text

Another major improvement is the formatting when saving from Acrobat Pro into other formats such as Microsoft Word - Pro X seems to do a much better job of giving you a Word file that looks like the original PDF. Saving to plain text also seems to give more accurate and reliable results.

Taken together, both these features now make Acrobat Pro X a very useful tool for anyone who wants to create accessible resources and Books for All: you can scan paper resources to PDF, check and correct any errors in order to produce a PDF digital version of the book that looks exactly like the original; and you can also save to Word or plain text and then edit it for example to produce a large print version of the book.

Adobe Acrobat Pro X is now available to Scottish schools from Learning and Teaching Scotland for approximately £51 per licence, plus £20 for the program DVD. You can download a 30 day trial version free from Adobe.

New 'How to Use Digital' Papers guide

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:34:15

We have added a new section to the CALL Digital Exam Papers web site, with information on how to use the SQA digital exam papers. There's also a new page where you can download user guides and information sheets on using and making interactive resources in PDF.

Adapted Prelims available from Perfect and P&N

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:24:58

Both Perfect Papers and P&N Publications are now supplying digital prelims with answer boxes - the same format and style that is used for the SQA digital question papers. This should make it much easier for schools who use these commercial prelim papers to provide them for students who need adapted digital prelims.

Perfect Papers say:

"Adapted: If you order the adapted version of our papers you will receive the Microsoft Word version, Standard Adobe PDF AND the specially adapted Adobe PDF file for candidates with disabilities and/or additional support needs. If the paper is a "write on" format this will include boxes for candidate responses to be typed or, for papers which are not "write on" this will be a large format master (A3) for large print. For modern language subjects MP3 files of the listening audio are also included.”

P&N say:

„Q: Are P&N papers available as Digital Question Papers to support candidates with additional support needs?

A: All 2010/2011 test papers are available as "ready to go" Digital Question Papers (rights-enabled PDFs with form fields included) to support candidates with additional support needs. Please order your papers in the usual way, but include this request along with a centre-based (school/college) email address and contact name. You will be able to order these directly via our new and improved website which will be launched shortly.”

Funding for a male Scottish Voice approved!

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:29:23

We are very pleased to announce that the Scottish Government has awarded us funding to work with CereProc to develop a male Scottish computer voice: a 'brother for Heather'. The funding will also pay for a licence for the entire public sector in Scotland, so that the voice can be used by school-age pupils, further and higher education students, workers in the public sector, and NHS patients.

Heather has been very well received by Scottish learners and pupils and we hope that the new male voice will be just as successful. It should certainly provide a better option for Scots boys with speech and language difficulties who use voice output communication aids, because at present they have a choice of speaking with very adult and very English voices, or one of a few rather low-fi Amercian children's accents, or with a female voice.

CereProc are currently advertising for a voice actor to provide the 'male voice of Scottish education'. A short list of suitable voices will then be drawn up and then the most suitable person chosen. The 'chosen one' then goes into a recording studio and spends many hours reading from texts, and then CereProc's engineers use these recordings to create the computer voice.

We'll keep you posted on progress.

In the meantime, if anyone has suggestions for a good name for the male Scottish voice (Euan? Ian? Hamish? Graham? David? Jimmy? Angus? Rab? Rhuaridh?) why not post a comment to let us know!

Royal Mail Book Awards - the Winners!

Allan Wilson — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:46:01

The winners of the Scottish Book Trust's Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's books were announced on 23rd February at a ceremony at the Tramway Theatre in Glasgow. The winners in each of the three categories were as follows:

Early Years (Bookbug) Category (0 - 7 years): What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson
Young Readers Category (8 - 11 years): Invisible Fiends - Mr Mumbles by Barry Hutchison
Older Readers Category (12 - 16 years): Grass by Catherine MacPhail

Record numbers of children took part in the awards this year, with over 16,000 children from all over Scotland voting for their favourite books - 1000 more than last year - and almost a quarter of all Scottish schools registering to take part.

CALL Scotland worked with the Scottish Book Trust, the authors and publishers so that children with print disabilities who find it hard to read a standard book could get accessible digital copies of the shortlisted books on CD. CALL received requests for CDs from 57 schools and local authorities, allowing many more children to read the books and vote for their favourite. It is still possible to request a CD with electronic copies of the books in a particular category from the CALL Scotland Books for All web site.

Further information about the Royal Mail Book Awards is available from Creative Scotland and the Scottish Book Trust.

New symbolised Oxford Reading Tree books from Help Me Read

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:03:28

A few years ago Aileen MacIntyre, who teaches at Croftcroighn School in Glasgow, produced some 'symbolised' versions of Oxford Reading Tree books for pupils in the school who were struggling to learn to read. Aileen's books and work was featured in Examples of Best Practice in the 2007 Books for All Report. The idea of adding symbols to books intended to help children learn to read might seem unusual, but staff at Croftcroighn have found that the books help children with engage with the text, and they are sure that the books have improved the childrens' reading and word recognition skills.

Teachers might have concerns that children will rely on the symbols rather than learn to read the text, but the exact opposite seems to happen: for example, one teacher at Avenue End primary says:

"It is having a huge impact on their reading. It has helped with their recognition of high frequency words. They can now identify a lot of these words without the symbols. This is improving their reading and is now transferring to their writing."

Another advantage of the books is that they motivate children who are struggling to learn the words. Another teacher remarks that:

"These children were struggling with the reading scheme being used in class and were showing signs of losing confidence. Use of this innovative symbolic approach as an aid to word recognition has helped the pupils regain their enthusiasm for reading with definite signs of progress being made by them.

Aileen has now set up a company called Help Me Read to publish the books, together with worksheets, communication boards and record sheets to support teaching in class. The books are high quality publications, similar to the standard ORT books, and have Widgit symbols printed above the text.

The web site has information about who might benefit from the books, how to use them, an online ordering facility, and examples of how they can be used to support children with additional support needs, reading difficulties or English as a second language.

Most people think of alternative formats as being for example, Large Print, Braille, audio or digital books: Aileen's publications are a great example of how symbols can be used to make books more accessible in a different way.

Franklin Anybook Reader

Allan Wilson — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:31:52

Towards the end of last year we heard about the Franklin Anybook Reader, an interesting new device to support reading, and we managed to borrow one from Seiko, with help from Bert Brooks at Scottish Learning Products.

Great for Parents...

The Anybook Reader is a pen-shaped device measuring roughly 16cm x 3-4cm, which allows the user to make and play back a recording of somebody reading the text on a page of a book. This is done by associating a recording of the text, stored in the pen, with a small white sticker that can be attached to a page in the book. The recording is played back by touching the sticker with the tip of the pen. (The sticker can be removed and re-used without damaging the book.) The obvious application of the device would be to allow parents to make a recording of a favourite story book so that a child can listen to the recording of the parent whenever they want as they interact with the book with the pen. Could be useful if a favourite parent is away on a trip!

... and in Schools!

The pen could also be very useful in a school to allow a pupil with a reading difficulty to follow a story in a book. A teacher or classroom assistant would have to read the text on a page out loud into the pen and attach the sticker to the page. Pupils would then be able to listen to the recording whenever they want by just touching each sticker with the pen. Making a recording can seem a bit fiddly at first, but it becomes easy with practice and recording quality is very good. Rather than just use the pen to record the text on a page, the pen could be used to read text describing different objects in a visual scene. The Anybook Reader could also be used to create a simple, low cost communication aid for a pupil who has no speech, provided that they have sufficient manual dexterity to use the pen. Unfortunately, it is not possible to print or draw on the stickers, but a page of symbols could be set up and printed with Boardmaker, or similar software and stickers with appropriate messages attached to the sheet.

The Anybook Reader comes with a set of printed stickers, with pre-recorded sounds (vehicle noises, animal noises, baby crying, etc.). These illustrate what the device can do, but are of limited use. There are 256 blank stickers that can be used for recording and it is possible to buy extra sets, if required.

There are two models, which will both be available from Scottish Learning Products: The DRP-3000, costing £39.99 (+ p & p, + VAT), which gives 15 hours of recording time and the DRP-4000 (£52.50 (+ p & p, + VAT), which has 60 hours available.

We have a DRP-3000, which will be available for loan, though it is often required for demonstrations.

Burns needs a 'barry' voice!

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:44:56

Today is Burns Night and so we'll all be reading, reciting and singing songs from the bard. You can even download a free App to help you remember the w

ords and find out what they mean (See An App's an App for a that).

So, I was thinking, what about children who use voice output communication aids? How can they join in the fun?

Well, I suggest they need a decent Scots voice for their communication aid for starters. So girls are maybe OK, because they can get Heather, provided free of charge courtesy of the Scottish Government. So click below to hear Heather reciting the first verse of A Red, Red Rose:

O my luve's like a red red rose,

That's newly sprung in June.

O my luve's like the melodie,

That's sweetly play'd in tune.

Not quite Eddie Reader, but better than some of the alternatives, especially if you want a bloke's voice ....

Here's Microsoft Sam performing the first verse of Address to a Haggis.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,

Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!

Aboon them a' ye tak your place,

Painch, tripe, or thairm:

Weel are ye wordy o' a grace

As lang's my arm.

Not pleasant.

Or we could have delightful Daniel assuring us that a man's a man for a' that:

Is there for honest poverty

That hings his head, an a' that?

The coward slave, we pass him by -

We dare be poor for a' that!

For a' that, an a' that,

Our toils obscure, an a' that,

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that.

Hmmm. Loses something I feel.

Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop said:"Robert Burns is Scotland's greatest cultural icon, recognised and celebrated all around the world. His legacy is of incalculable value to Scotland and the country's image abroad."

What we need on Burns Night is a high quality MALE Scottish computer voice! Then boys who use voice output communication aids can have their say too!

Seeing Ear digital library now open to all print disabled people!

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:06:21

The Seeing Ear library is a free online library with about 2,300 books in digital format. Until recently only visually impaired or physically disabled people, or staff working them, could join, but Seeing Ear has a new CLA licence which means that it can now be used by any person with a print disability, which includes dyslexia.

This is great news for pupils in Scotland and the UK because the library has files for loads of books by popular children's authors such as Jacqueline Wilson, J.K. Rowling, Eoin Colfer, Michael Morpurgo, and many more.

To join the libary and download books go to the Seeing Ear web site.

Most of the books are 'Plain Text' (.txt) files which can be read using almost anything on your computer, but you'll probably want to open them with Microsoft Word or another word processor like OpenOffice and then change the font and font size to your own preferance. Then read them on screen or print them as e.g. Braille or Large Print.

Report on 2010 digital papers

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:58:34

A report on the use of digital papers in 2010 is now available for download. The report contains a lot of interesting (well, to me, anyway) statistics and feedback from staff who used the papers last year.

In 2010, 101 centres made 2000 requests for digital papers on behalf of 675 candidates. Compared with 2009, this represents a 71% increase in the number of requests, a 38% increase in the number of centres, and a 60% increase in the number of candidates. This continues the upward trend since the papers were first trialled in 2006.

While more schools and candidates used the papers for the first time in 2010, the data also shows that most centres which used the papers in previous years made more requests for more candidates. Once a school 'goes digital', it seems the number of candidates increases each year, and the number of digital papers that a pupil uses also increases. This is good news because it shows that the papers are in most cases well received and meeting the needs of pupils.

Centres from 30 of the 32 local authorities requested digital papers, together with 5 colleges and 5 independent schools.

Candidates with dyslexia and specific learning difficulties were the largest group of users (60%) of digital papers, although pupils with a wide range of other difficulties also used them.

Each year SQA send a questiuonnaire to staff who used the papers and Maggie Quinn of SQA has compiled some useful observations which will help SQA and CALL to develop and support use of digital papers.

The report also summarises feedback from a Focus Group meeting held on 29th October 2010, which will also help improve quality of the papers and administration.

The Digital Papers project has been a great success: a really good collaboration between SQA, CALL, schools and pupils. One of the key players has been Sheila Rennie, SQA Manager of Assessment Materials and Publications. Sheila, along with her colleagues Patricia McDonald and Maggie Quinn, has really driven the project along and the uptake of papers is a tribute to her hard work and professionalism. Sheila retired last year and we wish her well.

Including All Children in the Royal Mail Scottish Children's Book Awards

Robert Stewart — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:11:06

The 2010 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 31,000 children were involved and an amazing 15,014 votes were cast;
Over 400 schools and libraries in every corner of Scotland, from Aberdeen to Dumfries; Shetland to Arran, took part;
The 2009 awards ceremony brought 650 young judges from across Scotland together to see their peers act out the winning books.

The Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's Books were originally set up by the Scottish Arts Council in 1999 and are now run by Scottish Book Trust.

Early Years (0 - 7 years)

What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson
Love from Louisa by Simon Puttock and Jo Kiddie
Stormy Weather by Debi Gliori

Younger Readers (8 - 11 years)

Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles by Barry Hutchison
The Secret of the Black Moon Moth by John Fardell
The Dragon Whisperer by Lucinda Hare

Older Readers (11 - 16 years)

Crossing the Line by Gillian Philip
The Witching Hour by Elizabeth Laird
Grass by Cathy MacPhail

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

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 The Scottish Voice web site.

The books are available free of charge. Readers and schools can request accessible digital copies of the book(s) they wish to read via the Books for All website or phoning 0131 651 6236.

Manfred the Baddie rides again!

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:00:25

During November 2010, all Primary 1 children in Scotland will receive a free copy of Manfred the Baddie from the Scottish Book Trust. Manfred won the 0-7 age category of the Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's Books last year, and over 11,000 children voted in this age group. The books will be delivered to local authorities for distribution to every P1 class in the area. The author, John Fardell, is 'on tour' meeting pupils and will also be taking part in a Glow Meet on Thursday 25th November from 1.45 to 2.45. The Scottish Book Trust web site has more information and also videos and teacher resources and posters.

However, some children won't be able to read or access the books. Some pupils can't hold the book or turn the pages because of physical disability; some pupils with sight loss won't be able to see the book; others, with learning difficulties, will struggle with the text.

Last year we produced accessible digital versions of Manfred so that pupils with these 'print disabilities' could read the book and take part in the awards. Pupils with physical disabilities can press a key, click the mouse, or hit a switch to turn the pages, while children with other difficulties can listen to an audio narration of the story.

If you have any children in your class who won't be able to read the Manfred paper books and you would like a digital version for them, download a request form (PDF format or DOC format) and send it to us, and we'll send you a CD.

Note that these digital books are only for children who can't read or access the paper copy.

Accessible copies of 2010 Royal Mail Award Shortlist

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:32:59

We are pleased to say that we will soon be able to provide accessible digital copies of the nine books shortlisted for the 2010 Royal Mail Book Awards. The books have been produced in cooperation with the publishers and The Scottish Book Trust. Last year over 31,000 children were involved in the awards and 15,014 votes were cast. The accessible digital versions are for children with 'print disabilities', who canot read the ordinary paper books.

For example, children with physical disabilities who can't hold the book or turn the pages themselves (because of spinal injury or cerebral palsy, for example) can click a switch or press a key to turn the pages of the digital books.

Dyslexic readers, or children with visual impairments can change the font size and/or colours on screen, or use text to speech software to have the books read out by the computer.

The books will be available on CD, free of charge, from CALL: details should be upon the Books for All web site by the end of November.

RNIB Scotland have also produced Large Print, Braille and audio versions of the books, for children with visual impairments.

2010 SQA Digital Question papers now available

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:37:01

SQA have made all the 2010 adapted digital papers available on the SQA web site. There are over 400 papers covering a wide range of subjects.

These past papers are ideal for revision and practice, for pupils who are going to be sitting prelims with digital papers, or are intending to 'go digital' in the 2011 exams. Subject teachers also find the past papers useful for class teaching: the papers can be shown on an interactve white board and answers typed on-screen.

You can also download digital versions of answer booklets, for use with papers that are not "question-and-answer" format (i.e. most Standard Grade Credit, and Higher and Advanced Higher papers).

Heather the Scottish Computer Voice needs a brother!

Robert Stewart — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:08:53

The Scottish Voice has been very well received by the Scottish educational community and we know that she is being used to listen to:

SQA digital exams;
novels;
digital textbooks;
Microsoft Word documents;
resources on Glow.

She is also used by children who can’t speak and who use voice output communication aids.

Heather needs a brother! Some boys have said that they would like to listen to digital resources spoken in a male Scottish voice, and we don’t think that Heather is acceptable for boys who use communication aids. If you were a boy, would you like your voice to sound like Heather, lovely though she is?

We are hoping to raise funds to enable CereProc to create a sibling for Heather. Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions about where we could get the money, or about a male Scot who has a good voice that we could approach to become the (male) voice of Scottish education!

Electronic textbooks from RNIB

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:58:01

Over 100 textbooks (mainly for the English curriculum) and novels in Word 2003 format are now available from RNIB. The books were produced as a result of the Accessible Resources Pilot project led by Dolphin and Inclusive Technology. There is a list of the books available on the RNIB web site.

The Word files can be read by pupils directly on a computer, for example by changing zoom settings, colours or fonts, or with text-to-speech tools such as WordTalk or a screen reader such as Dolphin's HAL. The files can also be converted into Large print, Braille, audio or other accessible digital formats. Many of the books have descriptions of images such as pictures, graphs and diagrams, to help learners with sight loss.

The books are supplied on CD by RNIB and each CD includes a selection of converter and playback tools. There is a handling and postage charge of £2.99. Teachers or support staff can request books by completing a purchase order and declaration, available from the RNIB site.

Dyslexia Scotland Education Conference Saturday 25th September

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:24:29

If you teach or support children and young people with dyslexia, you will be interested in the Dyslexia Scotland Education Conference which this year will be held on Saturday 25th September at the Edinburgh Conference Centre at Heriot-Watt University.

The theme of the conference is "Innovative Practice in Dyslexia: A New Decade". The conference is again chaired by Dr. Gavin Reid and speakers include Rob Long (Chartered Educational Psychologist); Laura Ann Currie (HMIe); Fran Ranaldi, Dr Margaret Crombie, staff from Lochaber High School, Jennifer Drysdale (PT Learning Support, Fife) and yours truly. There are also panel sessions and an exhibition.

This conference is always a great event and if I wasn't otherwise engaged talking at the same time, I'd be at Margaret Crombie's session on the new Assessing Dyslexia Toolkit, and the workshop from the Lochaber team, who have created a web site with downloadable audio materials for revision.

To find out more and book, go to the Dyslexia Scotland web site.

Accessible Formats from your local library

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:53:36

Forbes Smith, who is coordinating a working group looking at provision of accessible formats in East Dunbartonshire, emailed recently to say that East Dunbartonshire Library Service now has a service for providing downloadable audiobooks. So far they have over 560 titles available for immediate download onto PC, iPod or mp3 player and Forbes says they are adding 30 titles a week. Forbes says he signed up and then within half an hour of returning to his base, he had downloaded an audio book novel. There are an extensive range of materials available including lecture materials for university students.

To find out more, go to the East Dunbartonshire online library site, click on My Account, then on Audiobook Downloads.

Forbes' email prompted me to ask if other library services are doing the same thing, so I've just spent a few happy hours googling and exploring the online library catalogues in all 32 local authorities. I couldn't find many that have downloadable audio books, but almost all of them have audio books on cassette and CD, and also Large Print books.

South Ayrshire has downloadable 'eReads' (eBooks) as well as audio and Large Print, although they are Adobe ePUB format which is OK for readers with a physical impairment who need the book on screen, but not so good for people with visual impairment or dyslexia because the maximum font size is quite small and you can't read the book with text-to-speech software.

I've made up a table with the contact details and we'll add it to the Finding Books page on the Books for All web site.

So, when looking for books in accessible formats, don't forget your local library service!

Tah dah! CLA Print Disability Licence is now available!

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:25:09

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.

Paper materials that talk

Sally Millar — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:51:31

Amongst the new things seen at ICT and Inclusion last week were AbilityWorld's new Uni-tech Voice Symbol and Voice Ink. What’s innovative is that the special software prints sound as well as symbols and words on to paper (ordinary paper and normal colour printer cartridge). When the user touches the printed word or symbol on the paper with the special Voice Pen, it speaks (choice of synthetic voices). It can also play music/sound files or recorded voice.

With the Voice Ink software, when the user touches each word (or sentence, paragraph or whole page, depending on how the settings you choose) it speaks out, so you can use it just to check you've correctly read a few 'sticky' words, or to read whole work sheets, etc. A true 'talking book'.

The Voice Symbol communication software lets you make symbol boards or book pages, and record personalised messages, so it is a low-tech system that speaks as well! It also works through laminate.

The system is not exactly cheap, but comparable in price to some other recorded voice communication aids. Once you've got the software you can add more V-pens for more users at a reasonable price.

There is a link on the Ability World website to video clips on YouTube where you can see the Uni-tech system in use (albeit largely in Taiwanese...).

New Copyright Licence including ALL print-disabled people is here at last!!!!

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:50:40

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.....)

New guide for teachers on how to create accessible resources

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:23:24

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.

iPad leads the way?

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:55:20

There's a very interesting article by Bradley Hodges on the AFB AccessWorld site. Bradley describes his first 24 hours with an iPad and the article is full of really interesting insights. From the Books for All perspective, I think this comment is very illuminating:

"There have been two transformative moments in my professional career that I associate with gaining equal access to the printed word. The first was in the mid-'90s, when, as a university researcher, my department obtained a braille embosser and access to the fledgling Internet. One afternoon, a graduate assistant who worked with me casually dropped a braille copy of the cover article from that week's Time magazine on my desk. For the first time, I could read the same text as my sighted colleagues at the same time they did.

The second transformative moment took place Monday evening, April 5, 2010. On that night, I purchased a book from a book store, exactly as my sighted neighbors and colleagues would. I then sat in my den and read that book on the same device as my sighted counterparts.

Just as the introduction of VoiceOver for the Mac and iPhone suddenly and dramatically changed our expectations for ourselves and for those who provide access technology to our community, I believe the advent of accessible iBooks will be viewed by future generations as one of the landmark events in the lives of the blind."

In previous posts I've noted that eBook readers and eBook formats both need to be accessible if there are to fulfil their potential to provide access to books for print disabled people. With the iPad and VoiceOver it looks like it's just happened! (Provided we can actually buy books from the iBookStore in the UK...there's always a fly in the ointment somewhere...)

New Bookshare online introduction to accessible formats

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:55:27

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.

Learning to read - structured phonics products [Updated 9/12/10]

Stuart Aitken — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:39:24

In the wake of growing evidence in favour of a 'return to phonics' for example from Tommy Mackay's Scottish Executive funded West Dunbartonshire Literacy project, a burgeoning market has emerged that offers a number of products, not just for early readers but also targeted at pupils who have difficulty learning to read. But which product to choose?

CALL Scotland was asked this question recently by someone enquiring on behalf of a pupil with dyslexia. It would have been nice to have been able to give a direct answer but at this stage it isn't yet possible to do that. Understanding why we still need to hedge our bets may offer useful pointers to others who find themselves trying to decide amongst products and suppliers.

Sir Jim Rose's Dyslexia Review established a set of key characteristics or core criteria for a good quality phonics approach to reading which the Department for Education describes when discussing how to choose an effective phonics teaching programme. The site also provides links to a number of products and publishers that certify their compliance with the core criteria. NB A new stricter set of criteria has been produced and publishers are being invited to state whether their products meet the new criteria.

Is that enough? It's certainly a big step forward particularly in light of the fact that views were sought from independent assessors who agreed that they (the products not the assessors) did what they said on the tin. Why then is it not yet possible to state categorically that Product X should be used in preference to all others?

A clue lies in the term self-certification. Before any particular product can be favoured as the best method for delivering structured phonics it would need to meet more demanding criteria. With any 'branded product' we want to know that:

The results showing effectiveness are acquired independently; trials are carried out by people who are independent of the product.
Results are complete, there should be no gaps. If gaps do occur between pre-and post-tests they should be explained fully.
There is a control group. In clinical trials for any new drug, more often than not the control group will receive some treatment rather than none at all. They will often be given the current 'best of the crop', raising the bar for any new product. It would be good to see one structured phonics approach being compared with others.
If at all possible results should come from randomised controlled trials. Often, improvements are reported by showing improvements between pre-test and post-test data. This is helpful but does not allow the same degree of confidence to be placed in the results.
Information should be given on types of reading test used and these tests should be widely accepted.
Reading age scores should be provided as standard scores so that reading age is corrected for shifts in chronological age.
To their credit some suppliers offer links to the data they obtained to support their case for the effectiveness of their product. We welcome this straightforward transparency.
One of the lessons from Tommy Mackay's work was to show just how important it was to have clear step-by-step descriptions of what lessons were given each day and what procedures need to be followed.
It is always good to see evidence collected being presented in peer-reviewed studies.
At this stage the evidence is not quite there to show that any single structured phonics approach should be favoured against the others. Until then the advice remains - caveat emptor.

New Barrington Stoke eBooks

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:10:18

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.

Free Text to Speech Options for the Mac

Allan Wilson — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:59:18

We are often asked if there is an Apple Macintosh version of WordTalk, the free text-to-speech add-on for Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, there isn't, and, due to differences in the way that PCs and Macs handle sound, there is unlikely to be a Mac version.

There are a number of free text-to-speech options for Mac users:

The Mac operating system has a reasonable text-to-speech system built in. To use it, go to System Preferences - Speech - Text to Speech. Choose a voice and a key combination to speak selected text. Then just highlight text in any program and press the key combination. It doesn't highlight text word by word as it is read out, or do anything fancy, but it works pretty well and Mac voices are generally quite good.
TypeItReadIt is a free program, aimed primarily at people with a visual impairment, but it can be used more generally by people who want to hear text read out. Unlike the Mac's built-in system, TypeIt ReadIt does not read text directly from an application on the screen. Instead, you have to copy text from your application and paste it into the TypeIt ReadIt window. You can also Open a plain text file and have the contents read out. Note that if you are using a Word file, you will have to save it as plain text to open and read the file. TypeIt ReadIt has options to change the colour scheme and the size of text displayed. Unfortunately, the actual font it uses cannot be changed from Times, which will not suit many of the people who may want to use the program. Earlier versions of the program highlighted words as they were spoken, but this feature has been removed from Version 1.5 as it slowed the program down. This makes little difference for people with a visual impairment, but can make it more difficult for people with reading difficulties to see where they are in a document. There is a reasonable spell checker, but, surprisingly, this does not allow the possible word choices to be read out. One very useful feature is the facility to create sound files (in AIFF format), which can be played in iTunes.
NaturalReader has a free version for the Mac, which will read text directly from almost any application, including Word, web browsers and PDF files. Simply select the text you want to read and it will be transferred to the NaturalReader MiniBoard for reading. Words are highlighted as they are read and the colour of the text is then changed, making it easy to see where you are in your text. Unlike many 'demo' versions of programs, the free version of NaturalReader can be used for as long as you want, but there are a few restrictions, compared with the full program. Firstly, it does not come with a 'voice'. This is not a great problem as there are perfectly satisfactory voices within the Mac operating system. Schools in Scotland can also make free use of the Mac version of The Scottish Voice, Heather. There is also a restriction of 5,000 characters on the length of any document to be read by NaturalReader. Most importantly, the facility to make sound files has been disabled in the free version. If this is an important feature for you, either use TypeIt ReadIt, or get the Personal Version, costing $49.50.

If you require more features than are provided in the free programs, you will have to pay for the extra facilities provided by programs such as the Personal Version of NaturalReader or GhostReader.

eBook accessibility

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:28:05

Alistair McNaught, Senior Advisor at JISC TechDis leads the Right to Read Alliance working group on eBooks and his latest report to the Alliance identifies several very promising developments in the area of accessible eBooks.

JISC RSC commissioned research by Shaw Trust into the accessibility of eBooks and the report is available from http://www.techdis.ac.uk/getebookplatforms. The investigation was carried out by testers with print disabilities using their personal assistive technologies and looks at the whole process of acquiring, downloading and reading an eBook. The report gives some really helpful insights for publishers or indeed anyone involved in creating or authoring eBooks and other types of accessible digital resources.

RNIB have created a concise online guide to eBooks which summarises the different formats available, the types of readers available, and lists the main sources of eBooks. You can find this at: www.rnib.org.uk/ebooks.

Useful resources about making accessible resources from JISC RSC

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:54:41

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.

eBooks becoming more accessible?

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:36:12

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.

Training on BoardMaker 6/BoardMaker Plus!

Sally Millar — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:08:41

Hopefully everyone will now be aware of the cheap deal on BoardMaker software offered through LTS.

Please note that there is a training course on BoardMaker 6 and the new BoardMaker Plus! features in CALL on 25th March, and places are still available. Could be just the thing to get you started! Find out more and book

Making accessible worksheets and workbooks using MS Word

Stuart Aitken — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:52:17

Many pupils benefit from accessing worksheets and workbooks on a laptop or desktop computer. Instead of handwriting they can key in their answers or drag and drop words, symbols or images. They can also use spellcheckers, text-to-speech tools such as the free WordTalk and many other access tools.

But it can be frustrating for both pupil and teacher when the pupil accidentally – never on purpose – deletes or edits the question or other text or images. MS Word has a few net tricks that allow you to prepare worksheets or workbooks so that the pupil can enter text only into the answer boxes. The questions remain �read only�. Janice McCallum, of the Sensory Support Service South Ayrshire Council provided a handy guide: Making accessible worksheets and workbooks MS Word 2007. CALL Scotland prepared a companion version for those who use MS Word 2003: Making Accessible Worksheets and Workbooks MS Word 2003.

Creating Accessible Information with symbols

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:51:06

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.

Bespoke voices for your voice output communication system

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:45:42

Heather, the Scottish Voice, which can be downloaded free from CALL's Scottish Voice web site by anyone in Scottish schools, is a product of CereProc, an Edinburgh based company. CereProc make 'custom' voices by recording and synthesising human speech, and one possibility is to create bespoke computer voices for people who are likely to lose their speech as a result of illness or disability. CereProc have created a synthetic voice for Robert Ebert, an American film critic, who lost his voice after surgery. The voice was created by analysing the recordings made for Robert Ebert's TV series. This is fine if you are a well-known (in the USA) TV broadcaster, but not so good if the sum total of the recordings of your voice consists of a few warbles from your childhood or speeches at weddings and the like. Nevertheless, it's good to see progress like this because better synthetic voices, greater individuality and more personalisation all improve the communicative experience with voice output communication aids. Certainly, the response we have had to Heather, the Scottish Voice, has been extremely positive both when she is used for communication and also when reading out digital books, learning resources and exam papers. To find out more about the voices visit the CereProc web site.

New books on the Books for All Scotland Database

Paul Nisbet — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:10:18

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.

Teach reading, use alternative formats, or do both?

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:38:45

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 2009 Adapted Digital past papers are now available

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:02:05

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.

Free Books for All CPD!

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:54:05

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.

New ABBYY FineReader 10

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:27:29

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!

Half-price eBooks from WH Smith

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:45:46

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:

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

Lochaber High School Audio Revision Project

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:26:09

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 short audio stories

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:59:25

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.

Scottish Schools Browsealoud trial

Paul Nisbet — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:08:51

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:

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

Latest Publisher Accessibility Newsletter

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:09:33

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.

Creating digital files from printed materials

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:12:54

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:

Scanning the book
Converting the scanned image to text using FineReader Pro optical character recognition (OCR)
Checking and editing the text with FineReader Pro.
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)
Saving from RTF/Plain text/Word as MP3 audio.
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.

The 2009 Royal Mail Book Award winners

Robert Stewart — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:58:27

The 2009 Royal Mail Book Award winners were announced yesterday, 24th November, and they are:

Early Years 0-7

Manfred The Baddie by John Fardell.

Younger Readers 8-11

First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts by Lari Don.

Older Readers 12-16

Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray.

Making Books for All Part 2, 19-20 November 2009

Paul Nisbet — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:03:30

Last week 26 teachers and educationalists from all over Scotland gathered at Stirling Management Centre for the second part of CALL's four day course on making learning materials in accessible formats - "Books for All". The course was funded by LTS and led by Paul Nisbet and Stuart Aitken of CALL Scotland. We covered topics like:

'intermediate files' from which accessible formats can be made quickly and easily;
scanning books and hard copy resources into digital formats;
interactive resources created using Textease, Clicker 5, PDF, The Grid and Mediator (thanks to Maudie Riley from Highland, Graeme Bruce from Aberdeenshire, Janet Mackie from Fife and Owen Dunn from North Lanarkshire for presenting at this session);
recording audio resources.

The course seemed to be well received and we hope that those who attended will be able to use the skills and knowledge acquired to create more books and learning resources in accessible formats for print-disabled pupils. We hope to be able to offer more of these in-depth courses in 2010, as well as the shorter events that we run as part of our regular CPD programme in Edinburgh and on site in schools and local authorities.

Spellcheckers and digital papers

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:02:08

Staff, parents and pupils often ask us for advice on whether a spellchecker can be used with an SQA Adapted Digital Paper, so this is what we think is the situation. If you are in any doubt, contact the SQA Assessment Arrangements team.

Question. Can I use a spellchecker in the examination?

Answer: SQA’s policy is that "all software such as spellchecks, predictive software etc, must be disabled, unless it has been approved by SQA." [1]

If your candidate is eligible and wants to use a spellchecker (or any other technique that may help the candidate with spelling, like word prediction or speech recognition), you must request it using the standard Assessment Arrangements Request system. Use of a spellchecker is regarded as a type of Assessment Arrangement.

Spellcheckers should only be requested for candidates who have a particular spelling difficulty due to, for example, dyslexia, and where their poor spelling is likely to impact on their ability to demonstrate their skills and knowledge. Spellcheckers can be requested for candidates who "potentially have the ability to achieve the national standards" , but are "unable to do so using the published assessment arrangements". [2] A candidate who does not have an identified difficulty with spelling should not use a spellchecker. You will of course need to have evidence that the candidate’s spelling difficulty means they cannot demonstrate their skills and knowledge in the examination, and why and how a spellchecker should help. A spellchecker should not be requested if it won’t help the candidate, or if it will give the candidate an unfair advantage over other pupils sitting the examination.

You can request to use a spellchecker in almost all subjects apart from the writing papers in Modern Languages and , Gaelic (Learners) and Gaidhlig. The Writing papers for these subjects assess spelling and so spellcheckers are not allowed for any candidate.

Question. So how do I disable the spellchecker in Adobe Reader when I use an Adapted Digital Paper?

Answer:

Open Adobe Reader, click Edit > Preferences
click Spelling in the list at the left, and then untick Check Spelling while Typing

Mis-spelled words in the answer boxes will no longer be marked with a red wavy line. From 2010, SQA will supply two versions of each Adapted Digital Paper: one version will let the candidate use the Adobe Reader spellchecker, and the other won't (even if you have the spellchecker turned on, it won’t work in the answer box). The presenting centre has responsibility for loading the correct version of the paper on the computer, i.e. make sure the spellcheck-enabled paper is only given to candidates who have permission to use it.

Keep up to date with the latest communication aids + Free Lunch!!

Sally Millar — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:28:59

Act NOW and book a place at one of the forthcoming Scottish Communication Matters Road Shows. It is completely free, and you get a free lunch as well! Choice of three venues (all 9.15am - 3.30pm, or 'drop in'):

Tuesday 1st December - Edinburgh (Murrayfield Stadium, with CALL)
Wednesday 2nd December - Aberdeen (Pittodrie Football Stadium, with TASSC)
Thursday 3rd December - Glasgow (Hampden Park Stadium, with SCTCI)

This is THE opportunity of the year to find out about all the equipment and software available to support people with complex communication support needs. Suppliers of communication technology exhibit their wares and highlight any new products. As well as each giving a short presentation - you choose which you wish to attend - product experts are on hand all day to answer any questions you may have, demonstrate equipment, supply catalogues and literature, give you mini 1:1 tutorials. Unlike with visits from one particular company, you get the chance to 'compare and contrast' systems. Staff from the local specialist AAC services in Scotland are on hand to help to point you to local sources of informaiton and support, and you will also be able to 'network' with like-minded colleagues. Hope to see you there!

To find out more and to book online, go to Communication Matters Road Shows. Or, you can email Communication Matters or ring 0845 456 8211, giving your name, full address with postcode and contact telephone number. You will receive an acknowledgement of your booking.

You are also always welcome to contact CALL for further information, on 0131 651 6235 or 0131 651 6236.

Making Books for All CPD at Stirling Management Centre, 29 and 30 September

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:12:39

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).

Including All Children in the Royal Mail Scottish Children's Book Awards

Allan Wilson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:15:10

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.

Accessing the Curriculum for Excellence Presentation

Paul Nisbet — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:04:47

PowerPoint copy of presentation by Paul Nisbet and Stuart Aitken at the Scottish Learning Festival on 24th September 2009.

Livescribe Pulse pen for notetaking and maybe as AAC device

Sally Millar — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:40:23

One of the new devices on show at CALL's recent ICT and Inclusion sessions was the rather amazing Livescribe Pulse Pen.

You can see the product description (with video) at Livescribe.com

It has been designed for note-taking and could be useful to students and older school pupils with memory or writing difficulties of speed, legibility or spelling (or all of these). It's not particularly new to have a pen that records audio (though this one is good quality audio and can pick up teacher talk so long as student is at the front of the room) but this device follows through, so you can also quickly and easily transfer the file to your computer and link the recording to your written notes / diagrams, share notes via email, convert your written notes into a word processor file (with the audio still attached). The special notebook that is part of the pen pack might be an attractive alternative to heaving a laptop around everywhere.

The Livescribe Pulse pen is marketed in the UK, you can find more details at Dyslexic.com It's not unduly expensive at approx. £199

For those with an AAC interest, Karen Janowski from the USA outlines on her Teaching Every Student blog how you could use the Livescribe to create a talking communication book, and links to an interesting article that describes in detail how to do this, see "Augmentative Communication: A Low-Cost and Lightweight Communication Device with Natural Speech."

Books for All Database User Group meeting 24th June 2009

Paul Nisbet — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:06:25

A User Group has been created to take the Dooks for All Scotland Database forward and the first meeting was hosted by LTS on 24th June. Staff involved in providing books in accessible formats from 5 local authorities met along with Kim Walker (RNIB), Gayle Monteith, Maggie Smith and Jennifer MacDougall (LTS) and Paul and Stuart from CALL. The group discussed how accessible copies are currently provided and how they could be shared more effectively via the Books for All Scotland Database. Find out more about the Database and user group on the Books for All website.

Update: 13th September 09

The next meeting of the group will be on September 29 and 30th, when CALL will be running a two-day course on making books and resources in accessible formats. LTS are funding the course which will take place at Stirling Management Centre.