Making Digital Materials Accessible to Students with Reading Barriers

1. Making Digital Materials Accessible to Students with Reading Barriers

2. Printed Text Does Not Work for All Learners • Approximately 5% of students have a disabilities that present a barrier to reading printed text: • Dyslexia and other learning disabilities that affect reading • Visual impairments (blindness, low vision) • Physical disabilities that affect reading • These students cannot interact with a printed book in the same way that someone without these disabilities would. • For these readers, many ebooks present the same problems that printed books do.

3. Addressing a Common Misconception DIGITAL ≠ ACCESSIBLE

4. Benetech Believes that people who experience barriers to printed material have the same right to timely information that others enjoy. • Launched Bookshare in 2002 to make reading accessible to people with print disabilities • Awarded funding from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Dept of Education • Bookshare is free for all qualified U.S. students and the schools serving them! • Introduced “Born Accessible” and “Buy Accessible” guidelines in 2015 • Certification program now helping to set accessibility “gold standard” for publishers

5. Demonstration Examples of commonly used ebooks that are Problematic for Students with Reading Barriers

6. Buy Accessible: What to Look For in ebooks • Main text should be distinguished from supplemental info • Content should not be presented as an image • The TOC should be linked to the text to make it easy to navigate through the book • Tables should have headers and captions • Images should have descriptions • Page numbers should be included • Math should be presented in MathML format • Video and audio content should be accessible  • Interactive content should be made accessible • Content is compatible with assistive technology • A mouse is not required for navigation Side view of a girl reading a book on a tablet. We can’t see the girl’s face because it is covered by her hair.

7. Build Accessible: Create Accessible Learning Materials • Design for all types of learners • Insert meaningful hyperlinks • Caption your videos • Minimize the amount of text on a page • Avoid relying on a single sensory clue • Add image descriptions to visuals • Use available tools to ensure an accessible experience. Screenshot of a captioned video that features a Caucasian young man with blonde hair who is explaining that people with dyslexia are “not not intelligent.”

8. A Key Source of Accessible ebooks World’s largest collection of ebooks for people who experience barriers to reading print. • 560,000 titles: Textbooks + books for assigned and pleasure reading + periodicals • FREE memberships for all qualified U.S. students, funded by OSEP • Many FREE, low-cost, and commonly available reading options

9. Bookshare Offers Many Reading Options!

10. Be an Accessibility Champion! • Review “Buy Accessible” and “Create Accessible” checklists • Share the checklists with others! (both GenEd& SpEd) • Evaluate the learning materials your teachers and students are using • Encourage teachers and students to sign up for Bookshare • Check out Benetech poster session on “Supporting Different Learning Needs with Emerging Technologies”

11. Benetech Accessibility Resources • Build Accessible Coursework: http://www.benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Build-Accessible-Coursework.pdf • Your Guide to Building an Accessible Classroom: http://www.benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Building-A-Accessible-Classroom.pdf • Buy Accessible: What to look for in ebooks: http://www.benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Born-Accessible-Initiative_Buy-Accessible.pdf

12. Questions? Christine Jones, MBA Senior Education Program Manager Benetech Global Literacy christinej@benetech.org Tel. 650-352-0210