Making Digital Materials Accessible to Students with Reading Barriers

Printed Text Does Not Work for All Learners Approximately 5% of students have a disabilities that present a barrier to reading printed text: Dyslexia and other learning disabilities that affect reading Visual impairments (blindness, low vision) Physical disabilities that affect reading These students cannot interact with a printed book in the same way that someone without these disabilities would. For these readers, many ebooks present the same problems that printed books do.

Addressing a Common Misconception DIGITAL ≠ ACCESSIBLE

Benetech Believes that people who experience barriers to printed material have the same right to timely information that others enjoy. Launched Bookshare in 2002 to make reading accessible to people with print disabilities Awarded funding from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Dept of Education Bookshare is free for all qualified U.S. students and the schools serving them! Introduced “Born Accessible” and “Buy Accessible” guidelines in 2015 Certification program now helping to set accessibility “gold standard” for publishers

Demonstration Examples of commonly used ebooks that are Problematic for Students with Reading Barriers

Buy Accessible: What to Look For in ebooks Main text should be distinguished from supplemental info Content should not be presented as an image The TOC should be linked to the text to make it easy to navigate through the book Tables should have headers and captions Images should have descriptions Page numbers should be included  Math should be presented in MathML format Video and audio content should be accessible  Interactive content should be made accessible Content is compatible with assistive technology A mouse is not required for navigation Side view of a girl reading a book on a tablet. We can’t see the girl’s face because it is covered by her hair.

Build Accessible: Create Accessible Learning Materials Design for all types of learners Insert meaningful hyperlinks Caption your videos Minimize the amount of text on a page Avoid relying on a single sensory clue Add image descriptions to visuals Use available tools to ensure an accessible experience. Screenshot of a captioned video that features a Caucasian young man with blonde hair who is explaining that people with dyslexia are “not not intelligent.”

A Key Source of Accessible ebooks World’s largest collection of ebooks for people who experience barriers to reading print. 560,000 titles: Textbooks + books for assigned and pleasure reading + periodicals FREE memberships for all qualified U.S. students, funded by OSEP Many FREE, low-cost, and commonly available reading options

Bookshare Offers Many Reading Options! Computer AT Devices Mobile Web

Be an Accessibility Champion! Review “Buy Accessible” and “Create Accessible” checklists Share the checklists with others! (both GenEd & SpEd) Evaluate the learning materials your teachers and students are using Encourage teachers and students to sign up for Bookshare Check out Benetech poster session on “Supporting Different Learning Needs with Emerging Technologies”

Benetech Accessibility Resources Build Accessible Coursework: http://www.benetech.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/01/Build-Accessible-Coursework.pdf Your Guide to Building an Accessible Classroom: http://www.benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Building-A- Accessible-Classroom.pdf Buy Accessible: What to look for in ebooks: http://www.benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Born- Accessible-Initiative_Buy-Accessible.pdf

Questions? Christine Jones, MBA Senior Education Program Manager Benetech Global Literacy christinej@benetech.org Tel. 650-352-0210