Digital Text in the Classroom
Guest Columnists: Skip Stahl and Mark Aronica, CAST
In most classrooms, printed books are the prevailing technology
- a medium that provides little support for the teacher at the
point of instruction or for the struggling student who is trying
to acquire new skills or information. Although supports and adjustments
can be provided using traditional, printed text, these adjustments
are difficult to accomplish on more than an individual basis.
For example, textbooks provided in standard print format present
a barrier for students who are dyslexic or physically disabled,
and are completely inaccessible to students who are blind.
There is a growing awareness among instructional personnel, parents,
curriculum developers and policy makers that future curricular
materials will be expected to meet the needs of all members of
an increasingly diverse population, help all students achieve
the highest standards, and effectively integrate computers and
telecommunications into the classroom. In contrast to the rigidity
of print, the inherent flexibility of digital text enables the
provision of adjustments and supports on a class-wide basis. Technology-based
curricula have the potential to greatly extend teachers' reaches,
helping them to overcome the barriers to successful instruction
imposed by limited time and resources.
Technology allows print textbooks to be made accessible to students
with disabilities through conversion to digital form. The same
material in digital form offers many options for students with
disabilities. It can, for instance, be read aloud by a computer
or screen reader, or printed on a Braille printer. The power of
future curriculum will be in these alternative digital formats.
Curriculum content, activities and related links will be able
to be delivered to students in a manner that can be customized
to fit their individual strengths, and while these adaptations
may vary markedly depending on student needs, the flexibility
of the digital materials will support all these transformations.
Measuring the success of students with special needs in the general
education curriculum is a cornerstone of IDEA '97 and these students
need flexible materials to succeed. Postsecondary institutions
are required, under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and
the ADA to provide equivalent access to learning opportunities.
All of these efforts are further supported by a 1996 exception
to the Copyright Act (Chaffee Amendment) that allows certain agencies
to reproduce and distribute materials in accessible formats for
individuals with visual disabilities and certain other disabilities
(17 U.S.C. ß1211). As a result, many K 12 school districts,
and almost all postsecondary institutions across the country currently
digitize textbooks for students.
The National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (www.cast.org/NCAC)
is promoting policy to improve access to the general curriculum
for students with disabilities. Simultaneously, and cooperatively,
other advocacy groups, publishers and educators are joining together
to establish a national agenda for the provision of accessible
digital curriculum materials.
In March of 2002 the American Foundation for the Blind's Solutions
Forum has been successful in introducing federal legislation,
the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act of 2002, (IMAA)
that would establish a national repository of digital textbooks
and other curriculum materials (bill numbers HR 4582 and S.2246).
This repository would provide states with just-in-time delivery
of accessible learning materials and eliminate the current variation
in state-by-state requirements for accessible materials for visually
impaired students by authorizing a national file format.
While the IMAA specifically emphasizes accommodations for the
approximately 96,000 visually impaired K-12 students, its passage
would set a precedent upon which similar legislation could be
built, and it would facilitate the provision of digital learning
resources to the remaining six million identified students with
special needs. The timing of the IMAA is more than fortuitous,
since the formal re-authorization of the IDEA will begin in the
Fall of 2002, and if the IMAA is passed, it will provide a foothold
for crafting identical legislation that unequivocally extends
the same set of civil rights to all students with disabilities.
In addition, the federal government's commitment to accessible
technology is increasingly evident as the requirements of Section
508 of the Rehabilitation Act (see www.section508.gov)
are applied to all federal entities, and the extension of this
set of requirements to all K-12 curriculum materials, by including
them in IDEA re-authorization language, is a logical next step.
While the IMAA promises to reduce redundancy and increase the
availability of curriculum materials for diverse learners, a number
of states have moved to enact pre-emptive legislation, citing
the 2 5 year implementation sequence of the IMAA as being
too long to wait. California, New York, Kentucky, and Texas have
recently enacted accessible textbook requirements or have indicated
to curriculum publishers that they will give preference to materials
provided in alternative digital formats. Other states also have
similar legislation under consideration. These federal and state
initiatives clearly indicate the emerging importance of digital
curriculum content.
While these federal and state initiatives are moving forward,
many educators are still faced with the immediate difficulty of
providing students with accessible versions of curriculum materials.
If a school or institution has the resources to apply to the process
of digitizing textbooks (and they do so within the constraints
of the Chaffee Amendment), there is a range of resources available.
Premier Programming at www.premier-programming.com offers Scan
& Read Lite, an optical character recognition (OCR)
software package that includes synthetic speech support, text
highlighting, a dictionary and thesaurus for under $100. Omnipage
Pro II from ScanSoft (www.scansoft.com)
is a more costly and full-featured OCR package with synthetic
speech feedback.
For schools that already have the software necessary to digitize
text using a scanner, CAST's eReader (www.cast.org/ereader)
not only offers extensive reading support with multiple options
for synthetic speech and synchronous text highlighting, but it
will read web pages as well on either a Macintosh or Windows platform.
Other high-end commercial products are available from TextHelp
(www.texthelp.com) and
Freedom Scientific (www.freedomscientific.com)
as are low-cost packages like TextAloud MP3 from
www.nextuptech.com or
ReadPlease2002 from www.readplease.com.
For materials that are out-of-copyright and in the public domain,
the Web is the best place to search. One resource for locating
digital text is the CAST e-text Spider at http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=1300.
The Spider will perform a rapid author, title, or subject search
through three major digital repositories selected for content
that correlates well to instructional needs. For a broader, Web-wide
search, www.searchebooks.com
will find any instance of a title or author on any web page, while
www.searchedu.com will
search only university & college repositories.
All of the search options referenced will return indexed information
based on the search parameters provided (i.e., author, title).
Determining the relative appropriateness of a found item is left
to the searcher. For educators who find pre-categorized or catalogued
information more useful, the Children's Literature Web Guide at
www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown
is a comprehensive portal to hundreds of literature-related Web
repositories. Content listed at this site is appropriate for the
full K-12 range.
Since the passage of the Chaffee Amendment in 1997 a number of
disability-specific repositories have been created by educational
or non-profit organizations. The Texas Text Exchange at http://tte.tamu.edu/
offers a collection of over 400 digital postsecondary textbooks
to authorized users. Members of TTE can contribute materials they
have digitized and add to this ever-growing resource. The Accessible
Book Collection (www.accessiblebookcollection.org)
offers a more eclectic array of digital books, while BookShare
(www.bookshare.org) provides
a large assortment of accessible versions of popular fiction,
non-fiction and other trade books.
All of these Chaffee repositories restrict access to individuals
who qualify for alternative formats under the Chaffee Amendment.
In most cases, the process of qualifying a users means submitting
proof of a visual impairment or other print disability, signing
an agreement that the materials will only be used by the qualified
user, and acknowledging the copyright constraints. For a more
extensive overview of this requirement, see the Library of Congress'
National Library Service Factsheet at http://www.loc.gov/nls/reference/factsheets/copyright.html.
CAST has initiated a national project, the Universal Learning
Center (ULC) to provide a searchable directory of digital versions
of traditional curriculum textbooks, for use with students who
have a wide range of learning needs. Users will be able to link
to listed items located in the ULC's repository and either download
content directly or receive content on a custom CD. The ULC is
designed to offer a central resource for obtaining digital content
and will serve as an instructional hub for information, best practices
and tools related to the innovative and effective use of digital
content in the classroom, following the precepts of Universal
Design for Learning.
The goal of the ULC is to enable teachers and specialists to
locate and acquire accessible digital versions of curricular
materials in customizable formats that can be tailored to support
students with a wide range of learning needs. The ULC will also
help build the capacity of teachers to use materials to individualize
instruction. CAST will transform and distribute existing print
textbooks following the provisions of the Chaffee Amendment to
the Copyright Act. The use of these materials will be limited
to students with documented disabilities who qualify to receive
alternate or specialized formats.
Educators using the ULC will be required to commit to proper use
of curricular materials as part of the registration process and
at the time of document download. Further, the ULC provides the
required copyright notices with each document as part of the ULC
service.
This effort will be informed and supported in part through the
National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC, a collaborative
effort with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special
Programs (OSEP) of which CAST is the host and lead agency, by
the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and by additional funding
provided by Verizon Online, Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation,
the Oak Foundation, and the Barr Family Foundation.
Beginning in September 2002, The ULC will begin providing accessible
digital learning materials in a "Leadership States"
partnership with two key states, with the intent of extending
the availability of ULC content and support to additional states
during the 2002 2003 school year. For additional information,
please visit www.ulc.cast.org.
The confluence of emerging federal and state legislation, the
growing availability of high-speed Internet connectivity, the
declining cost and increasing processing power of desktop and
laptop systems, handheld and wireless devices promises a future
where all students can learn using flexible and responsive materials.
As has been referenced in previous publications* accommodations
created for those with disabilities often lead the way for all
learners, and in the process of creating, transforming and providing
digital curriculum resources this paradigm hold true, and creates
better alternatives for all teachers and all students.
N.B.
Chaffee Amendment, Excerpt from Pub.L. 104-197, Fiscal year 1997,
Legislative Branch Appropriations Act. Section 316. Limitation
on Exclusive Copyrights for Literary Works in Specialized Format
for the Blind and Disabled.
The Future is in the Margins: The Role of Technology and Disability
in Educational Reform, David Rose and Anne Meyer at http://www.air-dc.org/forum/AbRose_Meyer.htm).