“Into the hands of learners” Richard Orme Innovation Dolphin Matthew Horspool VI Resources Exhall Grange Specialist School

Session Overview “This workshop will feature some of the latest tools that provide a range of access options for learners, and make common tasks easier for teachers and technicians. Featuring technologies from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dolphin and Duxbury, this session is nevertheless down to earth and practical. Join us to help create a variety of accessible hard copy and electronic resources from some typical school materials.” Objective: to provide learners with resources that they can learn with effectively, using practical and efficient methods for everyone.

What is in the handout? Details of approaches, links to resources, software and apps But make sure you check out the groovy video of Matthew!groovy video of Matthew

Where do resources come from? Print books Other printed materials Created by staff From the Internet Whatever the source, the key is to get them into a flexible, structured, digital form...

Getting to digital For books: Check Load2Learn, SeeingEar, Bookshare, VI forumLoad2LearnSeeingEarBookshareVI forum Approach the publisher (Load2Learn helps with this)helps with this Failing that, there is always scanning…

Options for scanning Use a: scanner e.g. Canon LiDE (cheap, holds the book flat) document camera e.g. Hovercam (some books hard to fit onto scanner, quick)Hovercam Smartphone- apps available for Apple iOS and Android For Apple recommended apps are £8 or KNFB £80 (best for non-visual use) Also, some good options for Android (but I don’t know what they are, sorry)

Converting resources On PC, Dolphin EasyConverter can be used with scanner or document cameraDolphin EasyConverter Includes Omnipage OCR technology to scan or convert from pdf Here’s a video of Matthew and how he uses EasyConverterMatthew and how he uses EasyConverter EasyConverter can convert also pdf files to Word You can tidy up the Word files, add more structure such as headings. Then you can produce large print, braille, DAISY, MP3 files to suit the needs of your learners. Duxbury Duxbury is a dedicated braille translator for the confident transcriber, EasyConverter is more of a Swiss army knife.Swiss army knife

But… The approaches in this workshop apply mostly to text based materials There are still significant challenges with graphical and technical content Signs of progress in relation to maths, but we’re not there yet But on with the show…

Options for reading digital files on a PC Word – for Word files and text (say, from Load2Learn) EasyReader – DAISY files, great navigation, highlighting, bookmarks, braille support etc. EasyReader FS Reader- comes with JAWS AMIS – getting long in the tooth now, some reliability issues on later Windows AMIS

Options for reading digital files on iPad/iPhone VoiceDream Reader, reading app with great voices, or use with VoiceOver VoiceDream Reader Kindle app works with VoiceOver, and you can files to it. Kindle Read2Go app works with Bookshare, simple to use Read2Go

Options for reading digital files on an Android Rather more limited than iOS Darwin reader accessible DAISY player Darwin reader GoRead player for DAISY books (free) GoRead But Android has the advantage of the wonderful Ivona voices, available for free.Ivona voices

Options for reading digital files on an eReader No speech, but a good option for a large print user. Long battery life, robust, relatively cheap. Such as the Kindle (remember you can your files to the device)Kindle The Paperwhite model gives the best display of this type of reader.

Options for reading digital files on a notetaker Notetakers such as the BrailleNote also read Word and DAISY files

Converting pdfs This came up several times, so as a recap: You can try online conversion such as ZamzarZamzar Or use a scanning tool such as Omnipage, Abby or EasyConverterOmnipageAbby EasyConverter If you have SuperNova version 14 (Reader Magnifier, Access Suite or Screen Reader) use Bookshelf / Open file to convert then read in Word or the built in reader.

Summary For the greatest flexibility, get the materials in a structured, accessible digital file- there are several sources now Get the source file, or use scanning on PC or smartphone Add structure to improve usability and accessibility Convert the file to a format such as DAISY for the best reading experience on PC, tablet, smartphone or braille notetaker Pdf files remain a real headache, often OCR is the only way to extract the text and images, but usually editing is required