ATANET 1

ECU publication

Digitisation and reformatting in Scottish higher education: developing effective practiceDundee – Andy McMahonSt Andrews – Paresh RavalStirling – Darren MathesonStrathclyde – Carol Howieson

ATANET JULY 2012

ATANET 2

ECU project• bidding process

• how it came about

• funding

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Journey to publication• process of writing• wider survey• what we intended• what actually happened• pull back

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University of Dundee• The three core objectives for the service are:

– Develop and distribute University-wide accessible Microsoft Office templates

– Establish a Service to convert on-demand material for print disabled people

– Develop targets and an information strategy to preferentially purchase accessible information resources

• Dundee focused on costing and identifying true costs

• http://blog.dundee.ac.uk/altformats/

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University of Stirling• The University of Stirling is committed to providing,

as far as possible, completely accessible reading materials to all its students.

• In 2004 the need for in-house individual formatting was identified when it became apparent that standard electronic formats, such as basic Word or PDF, did not offer the flexibility to make particular content accessible to some disabled students.

• As a result of this, the student-centred Alternative Format Service bases its approach on the individual assessment of reformatting need.

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Stirling individualised print assessments

• Each supported student is assessed and a format is created based on their agreed requirements.

• This format is determined based on the needs of the student and the requirements of their course and is designed to allow independent working and a fast effective turnaround of accessible texts.

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Stirling AFS

of training

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Stirling ‘one stop shop’ for reformatting

• The service employs a high degree of flexibility in order to make reading as accessible as possible and alters reformatting techniques if the status of a student’s impairment changes.

• The intention of the alternative format service at the University of Stirling is to provide a ‘one stop shop’ for reformatting for students and the academic staff who teach them.

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Case study - Strathclyde

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The process @ Strathclyde

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Technology used in production• OpenBook scanning machine which produces high quality

scans across a wide range of book sizes

• ABBYY FineReader Corporate software which has professional OCR capability with batch process functionality through its Hot Folder application for OCR, proofreading and reformatting

Student assistive software for reading, including:• Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000• ZoomText Magnification/Reader• JAWS screenreader• Read and Write Gold with PDF Aloud

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Formats produced

• PDF image with text– capable of REFLOW for comfortable sight

reading without the need to pan.– readable with ZoomText DocReader and JAWS

• Kurzweil 1000

• Kurzweil 3000

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Reuse of material• Our processes from scanning through to

delivery are linear, whereby a readable resource is created first following which the accessibility can be altered, to suit the requirements of the reader.

• A text with light-touch processing can therefore be reused by a student, who has greater requirements, with additional stages of work being done but no re-working should be required.

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Choice between Readable and Accessible

Our aim is to ensure that the students receive readable material on time, and are supported to be autonomous learners. •Where an e-text exists within the university catalogue it is checked to determine whether or not it is readable.

– If e-pub is readable then it is made available to the student.

•Pre-released versions are made available from auto-process then replaced with chapter-named light-touch proofread version.•Digitised materials are made available without reformatting and adaptation unless specifically requested/required.

– Images are not described– Tables are not linearised

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Risks or Issues to current Service Where success of the service is measured on

getting the students’ required reading to them, on time, in a readable format, it is greatly dependent on:

• timely identification of the students and their class codes

• timely assessment of students’ print requirements• timely provision of reading lists with meaningful

reference to required reading and meaningful required by dates

• capacity and flexibility to meet demand at points of high volume demand