Meeting on accessible textbooks

From the Field

Signed report

Meeting on accessible textbooks

Mary Ann Siller

On March 2, 2000, the AFB (American Foundation for the Blind) Textbook and Instructional Materials Solutions Forum met in Dallas, TX, before AFB's 14th Annual Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute. The AFB Solutions Forum is a collaborative, national effort to promote timely access to textbooks and instructional materials for students who are blind or visually impaired. Textbook publishers, producers of specialized media, educators, parents, assistive technology specialists, and consumers participate in the forum. The last in-person meeting was held in Louisville, KY, on October 21, 1999.

Thirty-three AFB Solutions Forum partners attended in Dallas, and 12 partners participated by teleconference. The five work groups (Electronic Files and Research and Development, Legislative and Policymaking, Training and Other Needs, Production, and Communication and Collaboration) each discussed outstanding issues and work from its July 1999 work plan.

The forum enacted several national initiatives, including three national surveys that were developed by three of the five work groups. The Training and Other Needs, Production, and Electronic Files and Research and Development work groups disseminated the surveys throughout the United States.

The Production work group survey focuses on information for improving production and acquisition of specialized textbooks and instructional materials for students with visual impairments. The survey examines six areas: demographics, organizational structure, current sources of textbooks and instructional materials, production of textbooks and instructional materials, dissemination, and evaluation of services to produce textbooks and instructional materials in braille and other accessible formats.

The Training and Other Needs work group survey is a compilation of data on braille transcribers from each U.S. state on the number of transcribers producing textbooks, the skill sets needed by transcribers, the training of transcribers, and the resources for continued training for transcribers; the survey also includes suggestions for recruitment and retention of braille transcribers.

The Electronic Files and Research and Development work group survey is an investigation of visually impaired students' methods for accessing multimedia information. The emphasis of the survey is on multimedia textbooks and presentations in educational settings. The survey asked of information on teachers' methods of adaptation of multimedia information, and on the training needed for the use of adaptation of multimedia information and other classroom presentations.

The final reports based on these surveys will supply general information to encourage states to create better policies and processes for producing textbooks and other instructional materials in accessible media. The work groups have begun analyzing the data and will develop the final reports in summer 2000.

For more information, contact Mary Ann Siller, AFB Solutions Forum project coordinator and co-chair of AFB's National Education Program; phone: 214-352-7222; E-mail address is: siller@afb.net, or Marie Amerson, AFB Solutions Forum facilitator for the Communication and Collaboration work group; phone: 912-751-6096; E-mail address is: mamerson@email.etcmcn.org; Web site address is: www.afb.org or  www.tsbvi.edu.

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Last Revision: July 30, 2002