Lecture 2: Providing Educational Content: Today, Tomorrow, and the Future
Brad Turner
Vice President of Global Literacy, Benetech/Bookshare
United States
My name is Brad Turner, I run Global Literacy at Benetech, and the largest program within my organization is Bookshare. During this presentation I will talk about Bookshare, about the DIAGRAM Center, which is really going beyond text, and about an initiative that we call Born Accessible. So I will explain all of those, but first, let me start with Bookshare.
Bookshare is the world's largest library of eBooks for people with print disabilities; so that's of course blind, visually impaired, dyslexic, or mobility impaired, unable to hold a book, or turn a page. We have about 500,000 titles, eBooks, we get them in from over 800 publishers. So we work with publishers around the world and they send us their books, so we have a book the same day Amazon has a book. That is very important, and Maarten talked about this as well, very important that a person can have the same book, at the same time, in the same location as their colleague without a print disability. There should be no difference.
We run a web service and so we work with partners to provide reading tools. And we have dozens of partners that provide tools on iOS, on Android, on computer, browser-based reading tools, so we have many different partner tools and we allow people to choose what works best for them. We also work with specialty device manufacturers for assistive technology devices.
Of course, as we all know, a service like Bookshare, a service like Dedicon provides 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week access to books, so that a student, when they're studying for an exam on Monday, and if they are like my children, they start studying on Sunday night, they can get access to whatever materials they need, whenever they need it.
We have books in 25 different languages; we have members in 70 different countries. We have all types of books, but as Maarten said, many of our books are literature books. Of our approximately 500,000 books, there are about 20,000 textbooks: science, math, engineering, chemistry, biology, those types of books we have about 20,000 in our collection.
Fifteen years ago when we started Bookshare, we made a decision that the eBook will be our core format. And from the eBook, we can convert into any of these formats: audio, large-print, Braille. So, if you want a Braille book from Bookshare, there are 500,000 choices. If you want an audio book from Bookshare, there are 500,000 choices. If you want synchronized reading, where the text highlights at the same time the word is said, there are 500,000 from Bookshare, because we convert from an eBook, and that is the most important thing.
We are funded by the United States government, Department of Education, and every student in the country that is qualified, gets Bookshare for free. So we have over 420,000 students accessing books. And because of that, we have had, since we started, over 10 million downloads. There are approximately 1.7 million downloads every year.
So that's Bookshare: it's a large library, primarily serving students, primarily for schoolwork in the United States, although we do have a large international presence in many different languages.
Here's a screenshot of a web-reading tool called the Bookshare Web Reader, that allows you to see how a word is highlighted as it's read. So what happens is, it will read the words, and the highlights will move. This is perfect for our dyslexic students, who may not be able to decode the word, but they can see it and hear it at the same time.
Like Dedicon, approximately 85 percent of our members have dyslexia. About 15 percent have a mobility impairment or are blind. So a majority of our users use a technology like this, where the word highlights as it is read. And that continues to scroll as the word is read.
If you look at this page, that's Harry Potter. No pictures, your screen reader reads that. Pretty easy. Secondary school biology, university-level chemistry, images, math, videos, interactives like 3D printing, games, virtual reality, that's very difficult.
How do you describe a DNA strand, if you can't see it, in a book? We have a group called the DIAGRAM Center, that is making science, technology, engineering, art, and math accessible: things beyond text. And we're doing that in a number of different ways. We provide tools to publishers, we provide tools to end users for accessibility, we do training, we help publishers with their publishing process, and we do research and design to understand how to make certain things more accessible.
If you're looking at a webpage sometime, and you see a slider bar, right? If you want to grab a slider and move it, close your eyes and grab that slider and move it. It's very difficult. Drag and drop; move this shape to where it belongs in the puzzle. Close your eyes and move it, drag and drop shape - very difficult. So we are working on ways to make things like that more accessible.
We are talking about content in a number of different ranges of formats. What do you do with images? Can you describe every image? Do you have to describe every image? What do you do with a video? There was a story, that Harvard University, one of the most famous universities, had 80,000 hours of video that was not accessible because it was not captioned, and they had to pull it down, because that's a law with the United States; if it's published, it has to be accessible. That's a lot of content. So is there a way to make that content accessible, so that they don't have to pull it down? Because 80,000 hours of Harvard content is very valuable. Many universities are struggling with that right now.
The DIAGRAM Center is also starting to look beyond print disabilities, and there was a question about hearing impairment. What about autism? What about intellectual disabilities? Some of the tools that DAISY Consortium members work with now don't help hearing impairments. So does closed captioning help? Or what if you're deaf and blind? So there continues to be many challenges; the DIAGRAM Center is really advanced thinking on how to make texts accessible.
And then the last thing is, we're looking at younger ages. In the United States, dyslexia is diagnosed usually at about 6 years old, 7 years old, 8 years old, 10, 12, 15 years old. But can we catch it at three or four? Because if we can, then the tools we provide make it easier for that child to learn and stay current with their class.
Specifically these are the things the DIAGRAM Center is working on right now: a repository for common images and descriptions. Let me take the Mona Lisa, a very famous painting, as an example. If I say, I'm reading a book, "This is a famous painting called the Mona Lisa, by da Vinci." If you're blind, what does it look like? You can't tell. So you have to describe the image. How many different ways can you describe the Mona Lisa? How many different ways can you describe the periodic table of the elements, the chemistry table that says, hydrogen, helium, oxygen? It hasn't changed in a hundred years. So let's have the periodic table and four descriptions: primary school, middle school, secondary school, university. Now somebody can take that image, put it in their book. Take the description that they want, put it in their book. They're done. So we are building a repository of the most common images.
We're talking about multiple modalities, things like a 3D printed pattern. Remember that picture of the DNA molecule of the double helix? I said how would you describe that? If you can print it, somebody can feel it.
We're working on a project called the Math Support Finder, which allows people to display math. Math is very difficult. Depending on whether they use a PC or a Macintosh, or their phone, depending on what operating system they're using, depending on what application they're using or what browser they're using, we are developing a matrix to allow them to say, oh, this is what I need to use to display my math.
I talked about images. There is a good way to describe an image, and there's a bad way to describe an image. We're helping train publishers on how to describe images. I talked about slider bars and drag and drop. We're helping build code that publishers and web developers can use to make their web properties more accessible. So we are working through the DIAGRAM Center to help publishers build books more accessibly.
And that brings me to Born Accessible.
So our library is large, 500,000 books. We get them from publishers. Every book we get, up to 10,000 books per month, like Maarten, like Dedicon, we look at, and we add accessibility to it. Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to change a book that I get from a publisher? If a book is born digital, why can't it be born accessible? Why can't a publisher publish a book accessibly today? And so that's what Born Accessible is doing. It's really helping speed up, accelerate, publisher adoption of making books accessible.
There are two things that we're doing in this Born Accessible effort. One is we are working with the DAISY Consortium to build a baseline for accessibility. If you ask a publisher, "Is your book accessible?" what are they going to say? "Of course it is, yes." And you say "But does it have alt text?" and they say "No." and I say "Then it's not accessible." And then I go to a different publisher and say "Is your book accessible?" and they say "Yes, of course." And I say "Does it have alt text?" and they say "Yes," and I say "Great. Does it have proper navigation?" and they say "What is that? No." and I say, "It's not accessible." There's no definition for accessibility. Now there will be.
What is the basic level of accessibility? Does it have proper navigation? Does it have proper formatting? Does the text change, as you put it on different size screens? Not smaller and larger, but change in the way it flows across the page. Does it have alt text on all the images that need it? There are many more things that make a book accessible and now we are putting in place a baseline for that. Okay, that's great, but if nobody knows about it, then it doesn't matter.
So the second thing we're doing is giving a certification. So now a publisher can send us a book, and we will look at it and say yes or no. And if we say no, we'll tell them why, and they'll either fix it or ask somebody to fix it, and they'll send it back, and eventually that book will be certified, and will they be proud? Yes, because they will be able to sell that book to more places, more money. Books will be given a certification, it will be a global standard, and they will be promoted through a metadata of the book. And that certification is in process, in development right now; that will be launched within the next few months.
Let me explain why that is so important. When a large textbook purchaser says "I really like that content, is it accessible?" the publisher could say "Yes." Now the CEO of the publishing company is supposed to make money for their publishing company. That's their job. If they spend extra money on accessibility, then they're not making as much money as they can. I get that. I understand. But, if now a textbook buyer says "Is that book certified accessible?" and they have to say "No," and the textbook buyer says "Thank you, but no." and goes to the next one, now that general manager of the publishing company is losing money. So what is that person going to do? Make sure they make their book accessible. What's this initiative called? Born Accessible.
That's what we want to do - is make those books accessible at the publisher level. So that Dedicon or Bookshare or the DAISY Consortium here in Japan doesn't have to modify books. Those books are accessible right from the start.
So, the second part of Born Accessible, then, we talked about baseline and certification; is working with the purchaser to Buy Accessible. And the first thing we say is, "Look for certification." The second thing we say is, "Make sure, in your contract, you require accessibility, require certification." And we also publish a document called "What to look for in ebooks." I'm not going through it, but it basically says look for these things as you're evaluating textbooks. When you do your book purchase, buy accessible.
There are very large organizations in the United States; the entire state of Texas does a single book buy for all of their schools. The entire state of Tennessee does a single book buy for all their schools. The California Community Colleges System does a single book buy, they require accessibility. The New York City Department of Education, one million students in one school district, requires accessibility. So it's starting. When we provide a certification, it makes it easier. So, buy accessible.
But what about teachers who create materials inside the class? A presentation like this, a test, a document? So we have also produced a Create Accessible document. It's a quick guide for teachers that just gives them abilities to make sure their class materials are also accessible.
The other thing we say is, in the authoring tools, Google Documents, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, there are accessibility checkers. You can make accessible documents. You just have to spend two more minutes. Check the accessibility, and you can make an accessible document.
So, our quick guide for teachers talks about "Are you building courseware? These are the things you can do." Universal designs, insert meaningful hyperlinks, when you roll over a picture or a link, does it say picture? Or does it say "trip to Tokyo"? Does it mean something, or is it just a word?
So, last slide. Audio libraries, audio books eBooks, are so important today. Because publishers aren't building books accessibly. There are hundreds, and Hiroshi-san talked about this, hundreds of organizations around the world that are trying to make books accessible. Science, technology, engineering, math, and art are difficult, but we're making good progress. And when we solve that, there will be something else that's difficult. But we'll continue to make progress.
Retrofitting books is expensive, publishers should create books accessibly. They will if people don't buy books that aren't accessible. If you only buy accessible, publishers will make them accessible. There will be a baseline, there will be a certification program that says, yes my book is certified, no my book isn't, but it's going to be soon.
And then the last piece is that all the other things that people create, the in-class materials, the brochures, everything should be made accessible because there are many millions of people who need that accessibility. Right to information is a fundamental human right. Access to that information - a fundamental human right. Don't deny somebody that right.
