School Books for the Blind: „One Site Wants Money, the Other One Accessibility“

Inclusive classes – this headword is on everyone’s lips. Now a project team followed up the question if one can make it possible to teach blind and sighted children together. The solution: accessible school books.

01/12/2010

Julia Dobroschke; © DZB

Julia Dobroschke of the German Central Library for the Blind has been supervising the project „Accessible School Books for the Blind“ over one year. REHACARE.de talked to her about laptop classes, page numbers and quality checks.

REHACARE.de: Mrs. Dobroschke, with your project you put yourself out for school books to become accessible for the German-speaking area. Why are accessible school books that important?

Julia Dobroschke: Our aim are joint lessons of blind and sighted pupils. During the lessons, they have to be able to work synchronously with their books. An one-to-one translation in Braille is not sufficient.

REHACARE.de: What do you propose?

Dobroschke: The so-called E-book standard should form the basis for accessible school books. It refers to the guidelines for electronic books which are given in a Word document. In so-called laptop classes the pupils read their books on the screen. In this case, a screenreader and also Braille lines at the keyboard are used.

REHACARE.de: So that the pupils can work on assignments directly?

Dobroschke: Exactly. The reading competence as well as the writing competence should be supported; it is the same as with sighted pupils. At least, the same chance of education is anchored juridically. However, the actual situation does not meet the requirements yet. To be able to work together in the lessons, during the process of creation you also have to consider aspects which are supposed to be absolutely secondary.

REHACARE.de: Could you explain this with the help of an example, please?

Dobroschke: For many peoply the page numbers of the books may seem unimportant. However, the pedagogues who translate the teaching material often have to add additional information like picture descriptions. On the other side it also happens that the contents of the originals must be reduced. Thus it can happen that an accessible school book has quite another extent than the printed original. If the sighted pupils should whip page 13, for the blind pupils, for example, it can be page 24 in their Word file.

Braille lines at the keyboard enable pupils to work on assignments directly; © Stefan Kriegel / panthermedia.net

REHACARE.de: Which aspects does the E-book standard also consider?

Dobroschke: The most important thing is that all files are built up uniformly and structured – no matter what the submission looked like. In printed school books important sentences are often optically emphasised, while they differ in type-size as well as colour from the remaining text. Sometimes they are tagged with an exclamation point or other symbols. Now the translator has to consider which structure this information should receive in the Word file, whether the form of a paragraph or a table. He does not only have to understand the concept, but also transfer didactically in an appropriate way.

REHACARE.de: Let’s venture a peer over the rim of the teacup: What does the teaching material in other countries of the world look like?

Dobroschke: In Great Britain only few school books are accessible to partially sighted or blind pupils. From about 40 mathematics books there is only one which was produced in large print, so that also pupils with a visual impediment can use it. And only six out of 88 scientific books were written in Braille. Furthermore, there are no quality checks for the translations.

REHACARE.de: Are there really no positive examples?

Dobroschke: In the USA the situation looks a little more delightful. There is a technical standard for source files called NIMAS. This is a uniform structured data format. It is comparable with the international DAISY format, a navigable hearing book format for blind people. Moreover, the state finances a central institution for the coordination, the NIMAC. Fourteen days after a book appeared, the publishing companies must send an accessible structured file to the NIMAC. However, I doubt that this compulsion of the publishing companies is the optimum solution.

There are only a few accessible
school books in Germany and Great
Britain; © Erwin Wodicka /
panthermedia.net

REHACARE.de: Where do you see the difficulties?

Dobroschke: This principle is not based on voluntariness. Moreover, I think that it is difficult because the publishing companies lack the consciousness for the requirements and the didactic background. A publishing company cannot perform this at all because it is not their area of responsibility.

REHACARE.de: What do you suggest as an alternative?

Dobroschke: At the moment the publishing companies only create an accessible version after the production of the printed book. However, one should already have to participate before the actual production process. For Germany I wish there would be a central place where all steps are planned together. We need obliging standards and must draw from the experiences of all people involved.

REHACARE.de: Are the publishing companies willing to do so?

Dobroschke: With our last workshop at the beginning of November we came together with publishers and school book experts. We could interest the school book publishing companies in the subject accessibility and they have recognised that we must work together more closely in future. We have orally prepared an agreement on objectives which minutes the benevolent readiness on both sides for it. One side wants to earn money, the other wants accessibility. We have to meet in the middle and share knowledge. Thus everybody can profit from it.

This interview was conducted by Nadine Lormis.
REHACARE.de