AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND

Office of the President
11 Penn Plaza
Suite 300
New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212.502.7610
Fax: 212.502.7770

June 2002

Dear Reader:

One of the greatest challenges for textbook administrators, school district leaders, teachers, and parents is identifying appropriate instructional materials for the students served in their region. Ensuring that all students can actually access those materials sometimes poses an even greater problem. Students with visual impairments understand this all too well. Acquiring assigned textbooks and reading materials in braille, audio, or enlarged print formats at the same time as their sighted classmates is not yet a reality for these schoolchildren. Since literacy marks the first step to learning, improving the situation is imperative.

We at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) are pleased to offer a resource to address this problem on a national level. AFB's Textbooks and Instructional Materials Solutions Forum created this packet of materials to support your efforts to deliver the right books at the right time to blind and visually impaired students in your community. Our intent is to provide you with a template of the major issues surrounding textbook acquisition for visually impaired students, allowing you to improve the lives of these children and educate others with similar concerns.

The current document will evolve over time as progress is made and producing accessible textbooks becomes less problematic. Much of the content can also be found by following links on the following web sites:

www.afb.org/education.asp or www.tsbvi.edu.

We encourage you to share information from this portfolio with others who make decisions about the selection of textbooks and instructional materials. For more information, contact Mary Ann Siller (AFB National Education Program) at siller@afb.net.

Sincerely,

Carl R. Augusto

President & CEO

American Foundation for the Blind