DAISY Textbook Pilot:Accessible multimedia for school students

DAISY Textbook Pilot Accessible multimedia for school students

DAISY Textbook Pilot
Supported by the Community Partnership Fund
Partners with the Blind and Low Vision Education Network of New Zealand (BLENNZ) and the Manurewa High School Visual Resource Centre
Research and ethics input from University of Auckland

DAISY
Open standard for structured, accessible digital books
Synchronised text, audio and image files
Equitable access to content
Navigable and feature-rich

What’s the problem?
Print-based curriculum disadvantages print-disabled students
Usability of traditional accessible formats
Limited availability of accessible formats

Is DAISY a solution?
Provides information in multiple accessible media
Facilitates production of other formats
Highly portable, navigable and usable
Well-received in classroom settings internationally

Research questions
How do students, Resource Teachers Vision, teachers and teacher aides find DAISY textbooks compared with other formats?
How viable is it to produce DAISY textbooks?
What support is needed in the education sector to include DAISY textbooks as a special format?

Student selection
12 students
Half growing confidence with ICT, half confident with ICT
Half Years 7-8, Half Years 9-10
3 from each of 4 areas
8 large print, 4 braille

Nothing so simple…
Students use a range of formats and access strategies
Small population – hard to match individuals with requirements
Not statistical – qualitative research and production pilot

The study
Provided software and training
Provided books in DAISY and “usual” format for the 2008 school year
Questioned students and support people before and after school year
Final evaluation report due July

DAISY vs other formats
Mostly positive feedback. Students liked:
Accessing two formats at once
Ability to switch between formats
Skipping and searching
Portability
Ability to check spelling as well as pronunciation

Braille reader:
I guess DAISY's quite good, … since they have the narrator, … if you've got a book that's got M ā ori or something in it, and I don't want to read it, I just want to have the speech or narrator read it, it's quite good because the narrator knows how to speak M ā ori, and the BrailleNote doesn't.

Large print reader:
It meant I could keep up with the class when we were studying our novel, our English novel. And it’s actually quite good, because it combines the ways I like to do pleasure reading, because it reads and it shows you the words. I think I read my English novel about 4 times.

Large print reader:
It’s easy to use, coz you only have to do some commands to get to where you want in the book. There are heaps of useful things. Its easy to get around the DAISY books and not take ages.

DAISY vs other formats
Some drawbacks:
No access to tactile images
DAISY files too big compared to other e-text formats
Can be difficult to read text on screen
Computer issues

Braille reader:
You have to log onto your computer, but you can just pull the braille straight out and read it.

Production
Synthetic speech e asy and quick to produce
Te reo M āori pronunciation imperfect
Used some existing audio, including analogue recordings
Production efficiencies for multiple formats

Production
Timeframes a challenge
Interviewer: Can you tell me about any times when your classmates had books and you had to wait for your books to arrive?
Student: Yeah. When we had The Silver Sword . I had to wait quite a long time – about 2 weeks.

Production timeframes
Better classroom planning
Communication of lead times
Collection development
International sharing
Text-only DAISY will sometimes be appropriate

Support needed
Generally, students needed very little training
RTVs wanted training before students and access to software
Group training may be helpful
Training documentation for advanced features

What next?
Full evaluation report due July
Exploring funding options
Maths in DAISY
RNZFB digital library transition

Braille reader:
The BrailleNote is slow on the Internet. I don't have access to the school library, to just browse through. Like, say, we had a project on medieval Japan and we had to find an aspect of life and research it, and well, the Internet doesn't have all that much on medieval Japan. So, it would have been rather nice if I could just have browsed through all the textbooks they've got at school. But I don't really have that ability.

Questions? Moira Clunie [email_address]

DAISY Textbook Pilot:Accessible multimedia for school students

by Moira Clunie on Jun 02, 2009

Accessibility

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DAISY Textbook Pilot:Accessible multimedia for school students — Presentation Transcript