In a world dominated by print, images and videos, imagine not being able to access content vital for your day-to-day functioning: weather updates,  homework assignments, timetables… This is the reality for an estimated 285 million people worldwide who are visually impaired. Accessible content is even harder to come by if you belong to the 90% of print impaired individuals who come from low-income settings.

Harnessing technology for the greater good

Enter Benetech. The U.S based organisation isn’t your run of the mill tech company. It’s a nonprofit whose mission is to empower communities in need by creating scalable technology solutions. Their work is varied: from providing a safe space for human rights defenders in over fifty countries to document human rights violations to equipping environmental conservationists to protect ecosystems and species all over the world. One of Benetech’s  projects is Bookshare: and it’s transforming how over 400,000 people with disabilities read.

 

Bookshare is the world’s largest online library of accessible ebooks for people with print disabilities.

A print-disabled person is "a person who cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability". Through its extensive collection of educational and popular titles, specialized book formats, and reading tools, Bookshare offers individuals who cannot read standard print materials the same ease of access that people without disabilities enjoy. The Bookshare library now has over 475,000 books and serves more than 400,000 members.

BookShare works in 70 countries across the globe, with India having particular focus, as it has the largest number of persons with disability in the world. With outreach in all states, they are providing accessibly content in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Marathi with plans to add Kannada to their offering.

Providing children joyful reading material in many languages

BookShare is sourcing its multilingual content for children from StoryWeaver. Since all content on the digital repository of multilingual children’s stories is openly sourced and available in open formats, BookShare has been able to take ePubs from the platform and  convert them to the DAISY Format. DAISY (the Digital Accessible Information System) is the emerging world standard for digital talking books for people who are blind or have a print disabilities. This format has been under development for over ten years, with most of the world's talking book libraries now employing the standard in some form or the other.

Dr. Homiyar Mobedji, Disability Expert, Program Management [India], Benetech  says “Daisy is the most accessible format, for persons with print disability as a Daisy Book can be in various forms. Bookshare offers its members the opportunity to download content in either daisy text only, daisy with images, audio or BrF formats (embosser-ready electronic braille files). A reader can either download the book and read it on his own device, such as laptop, desktop, Android or IOS device, or use a dedicated Daisy player. Users can also read our content online using our web based reader.”

“Our strategy is to empower individual organizations so that they can reach out to many more on our behalf. This leads to a multiplier effect, which can be difficult to monitor in a country as vast as India. However, if our membership numbers give the indication that we are moving in the right direction.” shared Dr. Mobedji.

Bookshare’s outreach work brings them into close proximity with schools, colleges and institutions working with the print disabled. They have more than 7500 members in the country, and approximately 500 new members every month.

The nonprofit’s main focus in India is to create textbooks and children’s books, as these are both in high demand. The organisation has already shared the syllabus from a number of states including Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, NCERT and IGNOU.

More stories in more languages

“For our section on children’s books we are uploading titles in Indian languages from StoryWeaver.” shared Dr. Mobedji

Bookshare is working directly with a selection of schools in Pune, where a curated list of Marathi titles have  been chosen from StoryWeaver as part of the All Children Reading Project which promotes early grade reading with the help of technology.

“The stories were loved by our children of 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade, who can now almost recite all the stories by heart. The teachers have observed that as the children loved the stories, they accepted braille reading, which was difficult when the children were only given textbooks to read. Some of the children have improved their braille reading tremendously, which is a major achievement.” Dr. Mobedji recounted.

By openly licensing all the content on StoryWeaver and making them accessible in open format, we are proud to be associated with Bookshare and their efforts to take reading to ALL children.

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Via Creative Commons

"The Community Activities Fund is a mini-grant program aimed at supporting individuals and communities pursuing activities aligned with the network values and principles stated on the new Creative Commons Global Network Strategy. These grants are meant to provide quick, practical-level support for activities, projects, and events done by supporters and advocates of Creative Commons – from kickstarting projects, facilitating travel and mentorships, to supporting the organization of CC-themed events around the globe."

Read more about the Activities Fund here.

If you're an organisation or educator using StoryWeaver to create openly lincensed, multilingual reading resources for children, and are looking for funding, then do consider applying for the fund! 

All the best.

 

 

 

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Communities Rising runs after school programs for children attending government primary schools in underserved rural villages in the Villupuram District of Tamil Nadu. When they started their  new reading program, Betsy McCoy, founder and President of Communities Rising asked the students "How many of you ever read books for pleasure?" Not a single student said yes. Fast forward two years, and a totally different picture has emerged.

“All of our students are reading every day; story books, non-fiction books, biographies, all kinds of books. They are discovering the joy of reading! Without StoryWeaver, this remarkable change in our students’ reading habits would not have been possible.” shared Betsy.

Communities Rising was struggling to find beginner reader books in English and Tamil that the children would enjoy reading at affordable prices. Plus, they discovered that once their student’s were bitten by the reading bug, they could not keep up with their voracious appetite for books!

StoryWeaver’s relationship with Communities Rising started earlier this year, when they attended one of a workshop and demonstration in Bangalore.  Through StoryWeaver, Communities Rising has access to a wealth of books in both English and Tamil, which they can download quickly and print to share with children. StoryWeaver also provides them a choice of titles in a variety of genres, including books on STEM subjects. If a particular title is not available in Tamil, they can translate it to Tamil on the platform itself and have it ready for the children to be enjoyed.

“We especially love the bilingual books printed in both Tamil and English that allow our students to read in both languages on the same page. These books are a tremendous help with comprehension - it's like getting two books for the price of one!” said Betsy.

Communities Rising have downloaded all of the StoryWeavers titles in levels 1 and 2 in English, and levels 1-3 in Tamil. They are in the process of printing and distributing one set of all these titles to each of their 6 centres, thus reaching 360-400 students.

“We tried printing the books in two formats. One with single pages hole punched and attached with rings and the second with the pages stapled in the center. Durability is an issue and so we printed samples on heavy, card stock.” shared Betsy.

     

Creating Super Readers

The organisation believes that reading makes children learners for life and encourages reading in a big way in their after school programme. Each child is assigned a 'book box' which contains books that he/she must read each week - in both English and Tamil.  Children are incentivised to read through the SuperReader program which has been developed by Communities Rising.

“Each student has a CR reading necklace. They get a bead for each book that their teacher certifies they have actually read. After reading 10 books, they get ‘Readers Are Leaders’ pencils, and after 20 books, they get pins that proclaim them ‘CR Super Readers’. I'm happy to say that we are giving our many pencils.” said Betsy who believes that the necklaces, reading pencils and Super Reader pins help build a sense of community and sense of belonging to Communities Rising amongst the children.

 

                A CR Super Reader necklace.

At the end of the year, the top readers from each center will travel to Chennai to visit Tara Boks for a program there and the top reading center will have a book party!

“Last year, I told some of our kids, that I was looking forward to hearing complaints from their parents that they were spending too much time reading, instead of playing or helping at home. We aren’t quite there yet, but with the help of StoryWeaver, I have no doubt those complaints aren't far away.” said Betsy.

We look forward to hearing those complaints too!

You can follow Communities Rising on FaceBook. If you’re an organisation working with young children and feel that StoryWeaver could benefit them, please write to us at [email protected]. Do remember to add Freedom to Read in the subject line!

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