Digital School Textbooks
Digital School Textbooks for the blind and visually impaired schoolchildren
Owing to the development of new technologies and a highly successful partnership between three organisations (the Vodafone Portugal Foundation, the Ministry of Education and the publisher Porto Editora), blind and visually impaired schoolchildren are now able to “read” the same school textbooks that thousands of Portuguese pupils use every day. Using a system that synchronises sound, text and images, digital books have been designed with the use of Daisy multimedia format via the EaseReader talking book software, which both allows users to listen to the text through a computer's sound card and allows visually impaired students to read text in enlarged characters. This groundbreaking process also includes the complete translation of all the software menus into Portuguese.
On the basis of requests from students (between the 7th and 12th years of education), the Ministry of Education selects the textbooks to be produced, Porto Editora donates the texts in digital format and the Vodafone Portugal Foundation fully funds the production costs of the various masters totalling 100,000 euros. The various textbooks are then donated to blind or visually impaired pupils who attend educational establishments recognised by the Ministry of Education.
Launched in July 2005, the project has already achieved significant results: in February 2009, 40 masters were produced, including ‘Os Lusíadas’, ‘Os Maias’, ‘Viagens na Minha Terra’, an English grammar book and textbooks for history, science and information technologies.
Partners:
- Ministry of Education
- Porto Editora