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.

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

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.

 

 

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.

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. 

1. Begin playing a file.
2. 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)
3. 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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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!)