Saturday, June 25, 2011

Accessible Books for Visually Impaired Students

As my visually impaired son - who reads print with magnification - applied for college, the director of disability services gave us two great resources for listening to books...if he desires to rest from using magnification, or if it makes it easier for him to keep up with the volume of reading. We could have joined these memberships years ago; they are for students of all ages, but at the time I was looking for free resources. Now, the good news for my readers: Through grants, these memberships have become free of charge to eligible students!

BOOKSHARE:
"Bookshare® is free for all U.S. students with qualifying disabilities, thanks to an award from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs."

"Bookshare offers approximately 90,000 digital books, textbooks, teacher-recommended reading, periodicals and assistive technology tools."

LEARNING ALLY
"Formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic®"

"Titles from major publishers for K-12, college and professionals."

"DAISY format offers figure descriptions for subjects like math & science."

*****

You can read, on their websites, who qualifies and how to document the disability. If your student is already signed up to borrow free digital books from the Library of Congress, National Library Service for the Blind, you won't need new documentation for either of these organizations.

P.S. If you are receiving this as an email, you can read this post in a blog format, or read past posts, at: http://viphs.blogspot.com/