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 Māori 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 Māori, 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 easy and quick to produce

• Te reo Māori 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

mclunie@rnzfb.org.nz