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Internet Archive today launched a new service that will provide more than a million books in a specially designed format that can be read by visually impaired readers. The new service is part of the the non-profit’s Open Library project, which has been scanning and digitizing hundreds of thousands of books for the past several years and now has more than a million in its index. Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, who funds some of the Archive’s costs through his charitable foundation, said the new service more than doubles the number of books previously available to visually impaired readers.

We recently asked our readers: “If you could choose only one, what’s the skill you’d like every student to learn?”Perhaps surprisingly, while many readers did cite critical thinking as a skill every student needs, another skill was listed nearly twice as much as all other responses combined.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 12, 2009) — The vast majority of school-aged children can focus on the voice of a teacher amid the cacophony of the typical classroom thanks to a brain that automatically focuses on relevant, predictable and repeating auditory information, according to new research from Northwestern University.

But for children with developmental dyslexia, the teacher's voice may get lost in the background noise of banging lockers, whispering children, playground screams and scraping chairs, the researchers say.

Bookshare is happy to announce that Read2Go, the accessible e-reader app for the Apple iOS, is now available for purchase for $19.99 on the Apple App Store! Now your child can enjoy all their favorite Bookshare books on cool Apple devices like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch (4th generation versions). Read2Go allows readers to easily find, download and read Bookshare books all in one place with great features: listen to books with high quality text-to-speech voices see and hear words read as they are highlighted adjust reading speed, font size, and colors for highlights and background contrast connect and read with Braille displays via bluetooth and more! Go to the Apple App Store to purchase Read2Go today! Are we having fun yet? We hope your families are having a great summer. One group that surely is are the participants in the "Bookshare Everywhere" Summer Contest. Over 350 students are reading an incredible amount of books this summer, improving reading skills, and may be on their way to winning awesome prizes like an iPad 2! There's still plenty of time to play, so have your child join today!

When a federal judge this week threw out a copyright infringement lawsuit against universities working on a project with Google to digitize millions of books, he unleashed Google's plans and opened the door to the distribution of these books to people who are blind or have other print disabilities. The National Federation of the Blind on Thursday applauded the ruling, saying it will give blind students and scholars fresh access to the 10 million books placed in the digital library created by Cornell University, Indiana University, University of California, University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin.

For parents living with children diagnosed with autism, advocating for their child presents a new reality in parenthood, often unexpected and with more questions than answers. Once they have passed through the various stages of denial and sadness, questioned the experts, and finally accepted the reality of the challenges their child will face, they have to get busy. Time is of the essence, and advocacy for a child living with autism within the public school system requires that parents have a very specific set of skills.

This revised study finds that students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave without a diploma than proficient readers. It is notable in breaking down for the first time the likelihood of graduation by different reading skill levels and poverty experiences. It also updates a 2011 research brief with new data on graduation rates for students living in concentrated poverty.

The National Braille Press has released iOS Success: Making the iPad Accessible to help students who are blind to maximize their use of the popular Apple tablet that's playing an increasing role in education The book, NBP's sixth guide to iOS devices, provides step-by-step instructions for iPad setup (including all accessibility features), using VoiceOver and Zoom, connecting to external devices such as braille displays, find and download apps, and use services such as Dropbox. NBP has done a remarkable job enabling persons who are blind or visually impaired to orient themselves on and learn to use iOS devices -- keeping them current and on the same page as their sighted classmates.

In October 2010, The Atlantic Published an article entitled, “Autism’s First Child.”  This article chronicled the first documented case of Autism in medical literature dating back to 1943.  However, this article was really more about the man, Donald Triplett, a 77-year-old Mississippian, and his enviable life.  The author of the article, Caren Zucker, explains it best when she said: We wanted readers to come away with a critical lesson — that in real and material ways, the quality of life achievable by a person with autism (or with any disability for that matter) depends significantly on how successfully and spontaneously any society recognizes the humanity of that person in its midst. In short, pity isn’t much help. But community is, when community implies connectedness, inclusiveness, caring, and, quite simply, good old-fashioned friendship. 

When Judy Sorrell was a child, she knew she would devote her life to working with children with disabilities. As a 5th grader, well before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act existed, requiring public schools to educate students with disabilities in the "least restrictive" environment possible, Sorrell was already indignant over the way a younger cousin with Down syndrome was being treated in school. Though her cousin attended school on the same campus, Sorrell wasn't allowed to talk to her or see her all day. Now 59, Sorrell has drawn on that sense of indignation when necessary to bring the most up-to-date services and professionals to her students in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, where she coordinates special education services for students with low-incidence disabilities for six school districts.

Due to high interest in summer camps I have compiled 19 more great summer camps for individuals with special needs.  Many of these are hometown favorites suggested by readers of this blog, and some are specialized for individuals who would not otherwise be able to participate in summer camp. Whatever your special needs are, there is a summer camp for you!

This knowledge path directs readers to current, high-quality Spanish-language health resources for health professionals and families. The knowledge path has been developed by the MCH Library at Georgetown University and will be updated periodically.

The Connecticut classroom of the future may not be limited by a traditional school year, the four walls of a classroom, or even the standard progression of grades, based on a proposed package of unusually bold changes that are being advanced by the state’s school superintendents. Instead, the current system would be replaced by a “learner-centered” education program that would begin at age 3; offer parents a menu of options, including charter schools and magnet schools; and provide assessments when an individual child is ready to be tested, rather than having all children tested in a class at the same time. The superintendents’ recommendations also promote the long-resisted idea of consolidating some of the state’s 165 school districts, 21 of which consist of only one school.

Fluency is a critical skill for a young reader — evidence that he is comfortable "decoding" the words on the page and can read aloud with expression. If your child is struggling with fluency, there are simple things you can do at home to help build confidence and skills.

The 13-year-old author of The Reason I Jump invites you, his reader, to imagine a daily life in which your faculty of speech is taken away. Explaining that you’re hungry, or tired, or in pain, is now as beyond your powers as a chat with a friend. I’d like to push the thought-experiment a little further. Now imagine that after you lose your ability to communicate, the editor-in-residence who orders your thoughts walks out without notice. The chances are that you never knew this mind-editor existed, but now that he or she has gone, you realize too late how the editor allowed your mind to function for all these years. A dam-burst of ideas, memories, impulses, and thoughts is cascading over you, unstoppably. Your editor controlled this flow, diverting the vast majority away, and recommending just a tiny number for your conscious consideration. But now you’re on your own.

Google has added features to Drive and the Docs apps suite to make the products easier to use for people who are blind or have poor eyesight, an issue over which the company has been criticized.The improvements include smoother interaction with third-party screen readers for better text-to-speech performance and expanded keyboard navigation capabilities. The enhanced products include the Drive storage service, the Docs word processor, Slides presentation app, Sheets spreadsheet software, Drawings tool and Forms creator.

There's a great article over at Getting Hired dot Com about the lawsuit that's been filed against Arizona State University by several blindness advocacy groups. The issue has to to with ASU's decision to provide its students with the Kindle Reader as a means of accessing textbooks--and yes, the Kindle is still inaccessible to blind people. I'll leave aside for the time being the relative technical issues involved in making the Kindle accessible for the talking points are tedious. Trust me, the Kindle can be made to talk without difficulty save for the fact that it needs a more expensive "out of the box" operating system.