DAISY

DAISY electronic books offer the potential for more effective and efficient reading.  Options include:

• easy navigation and searching for text

• the ability to listen to a book while having the text on the screen

• listening to a book while reading the book via a refreshable Braille display

• listening to a book on a special player

The Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Specification is the result of a worldwide collaboration of talking book libraries, and was ratified by the American National Standards Institute in March 2002.

For more information:

DAISY Consortium

http://www.daisy.org/

According to their web site:

Our vision is that all published information is available to people with print disabilities, at the same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format.

Whiteboard scanners 

These scanners adhere to a whiteboard, and make an electronic file of what is written or drawn on the board.  This has obvious potential for online learning.  The possibilities for students with a disability are yet to be fully explored.  It is possible that a person who cannot physically take notes in class can be provided with print-outs of teachers’ notes and illustrations.  The device is portable, therefore having an advantage over electronic whiteboards.  The software supporting the device can be used for hand-writing recognition, making it easier to convert notes to electronic text.

Teaching with voice recognition technology

An international consortium including the University of Sunshine Coast is researching technology captures the speech of a teacher or trainer, and saves it as electronic text and electronic audio files.  The potential of this is yet to be tested for learners with a disability.

Background to this project can be found at http://www.liberatedlearning.com/

For more important information on converting materials, go to:

What to consider when converting materials in accessible formats (CD)