E-text at Purdue 2: The Adventure Continues

Dean Brusnighan, Assistive Technology SpecialistDavid Schwarte, Assistive Technology SpecialistHeidi Smart, Alternative Formats Coordinator

Outline Background

What we needed in new e-text format

Why we selected DAISY

Production system goals/reality

DAISY reader software goals/reality

Student creation of e-text goals/reality

2

Background Our current process provided Kurzweil and PDF

output to end users, for roughly 15 years.

For following reasons, Purdue needed to change the process for creating e-text.

• Software changed its licensing and we anticipated failure of existing software

• We couldn’t continue the process we’d been using

• Software failure for one platform happened sooner than expected

3

Background 2 We’ve always provided a method for students to

read e-text outside of a computer lab

Production and training are done by separate units on our campus

4

What We Needed

In our new e-text format, we needed:

Variety of readers that work on a variety of platforms

Navigability

Able to support a variety of content types (literature, mathematics, multiple languages)

5

Why We Selected DAISY Supporting DAISY already for Bookshare

and Learning Ally

Supports a variety of content types (literature, mathematics, multiple languages)

Production and reading software available from multiple vendors

6

Transition Plan

Production – 3 phases

1. Literary – plain text

2. Mathematics

3. Multiple languages

Reader

• Purchase reader for student use

Self-production

• Purchase student production software7

Goals for Production System

Relative ease of use for production software

Desire for similar production time

Tech support for production software and methods

8

Production System Reality

Production software relatively easy to use

One production system for literary and another for languages and math

Similar production time not yet accomplished but making progress

9

Goals for DAISY Reader Software

Available on both Macintosh and Windows Computers

Licensing should cover on-campus and off-campus use

Support DAISy e-text containing mathematics and DAISy e-texts with multiple languages

Work with DAISy e-text produced on-campus and e-text provided by other services.

10

DAISY Reader Reality Already licensed DAISy reader (Read&Write

Gold) does not meet all criteria yet has certain advantages

A second one (ReadHear) has been licensed – it does everything except multi-language e-texts

Unable to find a DAISy reader that supports multi-language documents via synthesized speech

Production method changed to include recording synthesized speech

11

Multiple DAISY Readers Read & Write Gold

ReadHear for Mac and PC

Screen readers

Reviewing options for tablets

12

Goals for Student Creation of E-text

Should be able to convert a wide variety of formats, including scans and other images

Should be relatively inexpensive

Should be relatively simple to use and does not need to have the number of options of the production software

13

Student Creation of E-text Reality

We have not discovered a single program that fulfills all of the needs

We will need to suggest different programs for different needs

14

What We Learned Have a definite timeline and solid evaluation

of production process

Students want accurate page numbers and titles

Yet student needs vary Some don’t want audio

Some don’t want page numbers

15

More What We Learned Student production training needs to be

early in transition

Students require more training on DAISY

Support for tablets increasingly important

Difference between laptop and tablet?

16

Summary Start early with planning a transition

Transitioning to a second production system more difficult than starting from scratch

Difficult to determine the needs of student users

17

Contact Us Dean Brusnighan

dabrus@purdue.edu

David Schwarte

schwarte@purdue.edu

Heidi Smart

hsmart@purdue.edu

18