What’s in Your Assistive Technology Reading Toolkit?

By Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D.

A lot has changed since I entered the field of assistive technology, owing to the fast pace of technological innovation. Years ago if you wanted to make text accessible to students with reading disabilities it was a rather arduous task of physically scanning the book using a flatbed scanner. Today there are many ways for students to access books without the need to scan a single page. The choices that you make will often depend on the availability of the book and the service that you are a member of. To begin the process you will have to decide whether you want to have your audio book to be read by a human reader or read using synthesized text to speech. Next you will have to weigh how important it is for you to be able to access the audible book on a portable device like an MP3 player or on a your personal computer. Once you have made some of these decisions you can begin to sort out the various services to access your novels and textbooks.

Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which happens to be located in Princeton, NJ has one of the largest holdings of chapter books as well as textbooks which are all recorded by human readers in their recording studios. Each book is recorded and supplied to students on a CD in their AudioPlus format which can be played on a specialized CD player which is available from RFB&D or can be played on a personal computer with the appropriate software application. When playing the audible book on the computer or specialized CD player, students can quickly navigate to a page in the book and can change the pitch and rate of the reading speed. Students with reading disabilities can follow along in their book as the book is being read- which is highly suggested. RFB&D recently instituted AudioAccess, which allows RFB&D members to download audio textbooks and literature directly to a Windows^®-compatible computer. AudioAccess books are easy to use and can also be played on a Windows based MP3 player making this a truly portable alternative.

Effective August 2006, legislation was passed by Congress that would require textbook publishers to provide their current textbooks with a copyright of 2006 or greater in a standardized National Instructional Materials Accessibility  Format (NIMAS). The NIMAS format which was jointly developed by a consortium of textbook publishers and the Center for Applied Special Technology would allow students to have a range of accessible audio textbooks. Last year, Bookshare was awarded a large grant from the US Department of Education to provide accessible books utilizing text to speech technology. Bookshare has a large selection of the NIMAS formatted textbooks available and ships free reader software with each subscription. Bookshare is now a free service to schools and gives students with I.E.P.’s and who have a “print disability” as defined on the Bookshare web site with access to their books and free reading software. School districts can sign up for institutional accounts and certify that the students who are included on the roster have a “print disability.” Once  the account is processed students can gain access to downloading their chapter books and textbooks from the Bookshare website. Students can have access to VictorReader Soft or Read:Outloud Bookshare Edition to access the NIMAS formatted books. Students using the Bookshare service need to be comfortable listening to text to speech. There are many different speech engines available  and students should preview them to determine which one is the most understandable for them.

Amazon has certainly received a great deal of media interest in their latest reader called the Kindle 2 which was recently released. At just 10 ounces and a 6 inch diagonal screen the Kindle 2 can store over 1,500 books which are available from the vast Amazon.com library. With the new text-to-speech feature, Kindle can read every newspaper, magazine, blog, and book out loud to you, unless the book is disabled by the rights holder. The text-to-speech feature is very well integrated into the Kindle and the quality of the voice is quite good. The Kindle 2 really opens up access to those students with reading disabilities with an elegant and easy to use device. With an Amazon.com account, books are easily downloaded to the Kindle over the free 3G network for which there is no charge. The Kindle 2 gives students access to the latest bestsellers using high quality text to speech technology. Just last week Amazon announced the release of the Kindle DX which they are piloting with select colleges. The Kindle DX has a larger format and is intended to be used to access newspapers and textbooks. Amazon will be testing out how college students can use this technology to access their textbooks. With the cost of college textbooks and the merging of this technology- it is clear that someday soon, all students will access their textbooks utilizing Kindle based technology of one sort or another.

Finally, for some students who need to be truly engaged in the reading experience there is none better than having access to Audible.com. Audible.com gives students access to a wide range of novels, chapter books , and bestsellers which are all professionally narrated and can be played on an iPod. This is a very engaging medium and having the portability of your books on your iPod is very appealing. With an Audible.com account books are simply downloaded to your computer and transferred to your iTunes library for easy transfer to your iPod. This is certainly a viable alternative to making text more accessible.

Just a couple of weeks ago Intel announced the Intel Reader which is a small portable device (1.4 pounds) with a camera with built in optical character recognition (OCR) and text to speech support. It is hard to imagine all of the technology that is built into this device that can be used to quickly OCR a document and have it read almost instantaneously. At a price point of $1500 dollars the Intel Reader is moderately priced for such an assistive technology system. The Intel Reader can also be purchased with a Portable Capture Station making it relatively fast for the student to capture the pages. The Intel Reader has a 5 megapixel camera with a built-in flash that can quickly process the pages and begin to read even before the entire text is converted. From all reports the text to speech engine is pretty good and the user can make adjustments to the speed at which the text is read. By all accounts the Intel Reader is a technological marvel for students with reading disabilities that need to have access to a portable tool to convert the text.

As you see a lot has changed as advances in mainstream technology have taken a foothold in  making text more accessible for students with reading disabilities. Certainly there are pluses and minuses with each of the technologies and it is important to weigh them before committing to one solution or another. In certain instances you may need to rely on several of the aforementioned solutions as part of your assistive technology reading toolkit. If you have questions about these technologies please consult with your child’s Child Study Team who can help guide you through the decision making process.